Loaded just a few of our nature photos from the last few days. Babies have flown the nest it seems.....I
caught the photo of Mama Quail looking for her babies. As I stepped out the back door I saw at least a
dozen little babies run up the hill. I snapped the photo just before she figured out which way they went.

Back to sketching..................(with summer just beginning my focus
has been more on nature!)
As a beginning artist, I have had trouble "seeing". That is, drawing
what is actually in front of me and not a preconception of what I
THINK it looks like. Once you have practiced enough, you'll have
taught yourself better how to "see. Another thing that I did early on
is practice solely on one part of the body.......eyes, nose, mouth, ears - since I wanted to be a portrait artist. Practicing is SO important! I haven't had much problem with that discipline....(more
a problem of time devoted to it and instead having to work all the
time) but, it's exciting, invigorating to see yourself progress. Even if
you work full time, it is still important to give even small amounts
of time to your art.

I did create this blog to be about both sketching AND music AND
miscellaneous things in life (like the nature photos I got caught up
in!) I like to listen to music when I sketch.....even outdoors with
a music player or phone. I also love to sing and get together often
with friends so that we can learn songs, teach each other things
and learn harmonies. For a long time, I thought that you had to
harmonize in a certain way....such as an alto or a tenor part like
you see on sheet music. But a good friend pointed out that if you
just listen and FEEL the music, you'll see where the harmony is....
there is no set way to do it. Sometimes the harmony is below the
melody part and sometimes it is above. Listen to some of your
favorite songs and see if you can hear where the different harmonies are. Try to match the singer's voice doing the harmony.
(It's not easy, there's often several!)YouTube is a great source to
use to do this, since you can listen to certain parts over again. It is
a great tool for learning a song you might want to sing, perhaps
for karaoke. After you've listened to the song several times, do a
search for that song and type karaoke after the song title or artist's
name. Many songs you like will have the karaoke version on YouTube so you can see what you sound like singing along with
a guide vocal. Soon you'll be doing this often to learn your favorite
songs!

Hummingbird babies are flying now. Only one stays in the nest. It has been fun to watch them and get photographs....almost sad to
see them fly away!