Friday! Skywatch or Illustrate

Simple, Detached and Happy!!!

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Top photo: The Blue Ridge Mountains for my second Skywatch Friday. Read yesterday's post for my first Skywatch entry. Above: Tulip poplar leaf. Pigment ink pen drawing on 9"x12" Bristol Board. Below Left: One of my "tree-lover" drawings incorporated with the pen and ink Seasons Series illustrations. Bottom right, the forest at Blue Ridge Parkway. Bottom left: leaf specimen drawings while on vacation.

One of my favorite things to do is walking along parks, tree farms and forests and looking at stately trees, the canopy and the timber line. I am not really an avid horticulture student. I simply admire the sturdy or shapely trunks, the canopy, the green color, the naked trees, the autumn colors and snow covered limbs, the shade, shapes, smell, the leaves and sometimes the flowers. I also like roots. Okay, I like everything about trees, the birds, the lady bugs, minus the pests and the creepy crawly creatures. Oh, I don't like wild animals that gnaw and claw and bite either. I just linger to view the sight and maybe detach a leaf for close inspection and in this case, a remembrance of my first encounter with a tulip poplar tree in summer. My husband says that if I lived near the forest, the trees won't have leaves. That is not true at all. I just pick one, or two specimen. Don't ask me why, but every time I see a beautiful or sturdy tree, I think about my parents and my family.