Mather Creative Mindfulness: Birch Trees

 

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What could be more Fall than a walk amongst Birch Trees.

We have family living in Sturgeon Bay, Door County in Wisconsin. Behind the house is a small forest with Birch trees and lots of limestone slabs...a walk is a bit treacherous, but so gorgeous when all the trees turn golden.

The class lesson was to make birch trees by dragging a card, or cardboard, or corrugated cardboard with paint across to make the black marks of birch trees. 

I have always wanted to try this, so I notched a little piece of flexible cardboard from some packaging. After making some loose stripes in light gray/brown watercolor washes for shadow sides of trunks. I then dragged black gouache with the cardboard and it made excellent birch trees with a flick of the wrist. 

Simple tools, cardboard, a few brushes, a wool sponge, gouache and watercolors.

I'm still trying to clean this last palette. I think I will make some more collage papers tomorrow and use up everything.

Foreground of birch trees...I had lots of fun, edges also made branches, and bush stems.

Casey also read us this Robert Frost poem...\

I can remember this poem, and Mr. Frost reading this in his sing-songy New England accent on televeision live when I was a child. It has always been a favorite.

A Road Not Taken     Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Poetry Foundation

And....May all your roads taken be all the Difference. 

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 Sandi Magle

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