26 December 2009     4×6 inches     oil on canvas

Such short days we have, and especially when they’re cloudy!   My Birthday December 26 has been darkly overcast with freezing rain. We drove out to “The 18 & 20 Bridge” a few minutes from home, to see whether the familiar Maple swamp offered an interesting composition for a quick painting, and I figured that it did, so Fred walked ahead to the Scotts’ place, to give them a loaf of Stollen bread, and I sat in the drivers seat with the passenger’s window open, two wheels deep in the snowbank by the guardrail on the south east corner of the bridge.

The striking feature of this scene was the corrugated drifts of snow on the yellow-green slush below the bridge. It’s hard to imagine what aerodynamics would have caused this series of drifts: perhaps wind blasting under the bridge as the creek was slushing over. Upstream of the corrugations there was a 2 x 3 m patch of thin clear black ice, which must have been the area that froze over most recently. The trees were all burdened by what may have been about 6 mm of excess diameter ice (seemingly more here than around Bishops Mills), but the temperature has remained marginally above freezing so that most of the drizzle doesn’t accumulate, but rather drips off without a net removal of the ice that is already present. I started with a fresh underpainting of greyish lavender, as the forest branches seemed to blend into that colour in the evening light. The upper surfaces of snow appeared to be picking up a pinkish glow from somewhere even though the sky was heavily grey – but the faces of snow was bluish.

These tints are very difficult to perceive, and never show in photographs. I sort of have to unfocus my eyes, or look with colour-seeking glances in order to identify different hues in something as subtle as snow. The colour of the open water over ice also took quite a lot of ‘glancing’ to figure out what it was, and to decide to mix it with cobalt and yellow ochre, dulled with a hint of ultramarine and dark red.

The multitudinous twigs were also a challenge. I decided to try brushing them in with sweeping overall gestures of thick pinkish white, sparkling only a few crisper individual branches and twigs as representatives. Yes, they are all individual twigs, but they can also be seen as masses of twigs – which works in a time sensitive plein air painting.

After an hour to work I lost my daylight, so I packed up and drove down the Scotts’ lane (nearly slid into their ditch!) to meet Fred. We visited with Scotts for a while, admiring their Christmas tree. The heat from their woodstove felt wonderful!  We returned home in the dark through Limerick Forest where we spread two buckets of bedding from our chickens to fertilize the trees at the Headquarters – home to steam Blue Mussels for supper from our “30 Years Later” visit to Bar Road, St. Andrews in New Brunswick.

It’s been a happy birthday – my 58th!

Fred’s database entry for this painting reads as follows: Canada: Ontario: Grenville County: Oxford-on-Rideau: Co Road 18/Middle Creek, 3.1 km NNE Bishops Mills. 31B/13, UTM 18TVE47 458 717 44.89865N 75.68608W. TIME: 1533-1630. AIR TEMP: 0.5, drizzle, breezy. HABITAT: slushily frozen-over slow creek/Red Maple swamp@rd embankment & bridge. OBSERVER: Aleta Karstad Schueler, Frederick W. Schueler. 2009/335/a, visit () (event). natural history, oil. birthday painting of channel & swamp below bridge. Co-ords corrected from 44.89865 N 75.68608 W to 44.897753, -75.686215 on the basis of Google maps.

Clayton vernal pool

11:00  Fred and I are booked as Invertebrate (non-insect) experts at the Bell Property Bio Blitz on Clayton Road.  This is the last Bio Blitz of the season – a very late one, at the end of a summer of more Bio Blitzes than any before.  Taking one look at the Headquarters, several tables arrayed with books, microscopes, jars of insects and rainbows of mushrooms, and computers, all set out under a series of canopies in the woods behind a banner for the Mississippi Valley Field Naturalists, gives the impression that this is perhaps the best organized Bio Blitz ever!

Adam and I, equipped with mushroom guides and painting kit, wander off into the woods toward a patch of sunlight where we’ve been told there is a wet area with lots of ferns, while Fred readies himself to lead the Invertebrate Walk.

12:00 We hadn’t gone far along a trail when it passed close by a dried-down vernal pool, still taking its summer rest, its dry bottom plastered with blackish leaves, criss-crossed by moss-crested logs, and shaded by tall old Maples green-skirted with mosses and ferns.  My eye was caught by a conical-capped mushroom that had matured from orange to a dark cherry red, but before I could decide on the composition, Adam had collected it and was in the process of identifying it.

I was also taken by a nearly dried-out Helleborine Orchid, its parallel-veined leaves turning dry and pale, and its spent flowers scraps of brown tissue at the ends of swollen green ovaries.  But I couldn’t find an exciting composition – in fact, with a wealth and diversity of fascinating forms and textures all around me, I felt like a confused hungry person in a restaurant with too many choices on the menu.  And many potential scenes depended on patterns of sunlight which would shift and change.  Finally after nearly an hour of indecision, I settled down behind a mossy log graced lacy ferns with fine-stems.  Adam found the shell of a fingernail clam – a live-bearing inhabitant of the mud of temporary pools and ponds.

12:45 I start with a dull purple underpainting, the colour of the light on blackish leafy bottom of the dried down pools, nicely contrasted by mossy green.  Adam takes his mushrooms back to headquarters to contribute a couple of species to the tally, and the Seburn family finds me and sits for a long time, quietly watching me paint, and intermittently sharing bits of the summer’s news.  It’s a perfect day, the last of our 10 day pilot trip, and I’ll be returning home tonight with ten paintings.

At 14:30 I stop, and pack up to go with Adam to pick up his car in Aylmer, leaving Fred to stay for the barbeque.  I will have to fill in some moss and crisp up the leaves before I can upload this one to the daily painting blog.

Paudash Lake
19 September 2009

There used to be a creek running through a culvert under the highway here, but there was only an energetic volunteer fireman to tell me about it as I sat painting just inside the guardrail from the shoulder of the road, looking south across the wetland with my back turned to the lake.  He said that when the highway was repaired they neglected to replace the caved in culvert, and now there is still a  wetland but no more creek.  His brother lives in the house to the west of the wetland.  I can hear sounds of children playing from the house. 

Most of the forest is in its own shadow as the sun lowers in the west, but the billowy Maples still have their tops in the sunshine and the late afternoon sunshine is on the marsh.  Patches of autumn-bronzing Pickerelweed make crisp dark reflections of thin curving stems and curling arrow-head leaves.  We hear a splash from the lake across the road, and my new friend returns, announcing that there is a very large Beaver “checking out” the place where the culvert used to be.

I began with a dark indian red underpainting, well rubbed in, and had it all finished except the signature by the time the sun set.  Returning to the trailer, I find that Fred and Adam have left some supper  in the pan for me. Then we push on down the road as we must get to Clayton tonight.

17 September 2009

Dutrisac Bay, we drove into a commercial campground/trailer park, as the sun was setting,looking for a beach to hunt crayfish and a lake view for a very fast oil painting.

We were given permission to park our rig and told that the rocky shore was to the left, and the sandy beach was to the right.  As I approached the beach, the wind was strong in my face and the waves were whitecapped all over the angry blackish blue lake.  The sky glowed peach under, behind, and through purplish-grey clouds with a hint of green.  I parked my stool in partial shelter of the corner of a marina building, took a photograph, and began to paint  as fast as I could, leaving the strange row of trees on a mid-distance island to add later from my photo.

At one point I noticed a movement near my feet, and there was a Toad of about 5 cm long, beautifully patterned with tan, olive, black, and white.  It was heading past me toward the beach.  I wonder what it does there in the evenings, and whether it noticed the wind…

As it got dark, I added some white caps, sharpened and darkened the horizon, and packed up – only half an hour this time, but I got the canvas covered and the colours all right!

16 September 2009

Waltham Bridge Boat Launch

17:01 This is the site of great Unionid diversity that Fred and Isabelle and JF discovered in 2001, when the river was much lower than it is now.

Just across the river from Pembroke, there is a nice picnic area that comes down by the Ottawa River. The river is 300m wide here.  Where I sit there is a picturesque  overhanging Maple.  We followed a path through poison Ivy to a point, and then doubled back a little way along the sandy, rocky shore.  Fred showed me a sandy alcove where the roots of an Alder are exposed. There is a drift of shells partially embedded in the sand – more Unionids than I have seen in one place in a long time!

Adam has been finding Crayfish among the rocks and is having a hard time catching them, as the water is deep and the stones are large. Fred is back at the vehicle fixing his other net.  A slight breeze ruffles the reflection of the young Maples along the opposite shore, blushing soft gren, yellow, rose all mixed. A Great Horned Owl is calling, somewhere across the river, and another answers it from farther up, with a slightly higher pitched voice.  After a few minutes I can faintly hear another, in yet a different tone from downriver.

The trunk, branches and roots of the Alder take a lot of concentration to draw and I leave the clams until last. It is getting dark and I will take it back to tint in watercolour from my photo.  My preference is to complete each of my daily paintings  onsite, and I look forward to having time to do that on the main Expedition that begins in March of 2010, but this “pilot trip”is driven by the 10 day 1000 kilometre itinerary of the Orconectes immunis survey and it’s a challenge for daily paintings!

As I paint and Adam dipnets for clams and crayfish, finding a few small Orconectes immunis, we are visited by two First Nations men who say they were not aware that there are crayfish in this lake. The man who stood watching me paint for a while said that he has a trapping license that he must maintain by trapping a minimum of about 15 mammals annually. He tells me that there is no maximum take, and the government has doubled the number of licenses in this area, so the populations of fur bearers is diminishing. As he left me he said “Paint fast, because it won’t be like that for long!”

19:35 The lake is ruffled into suede as an evening breeze springs up, and in a few minutes a great purple-grey cloud has turned the whole lake surface to match it. Large rain drops begin to patter down around me and I lean over my paper and pack up my watercolours to paint the last strokes from the shelter of the vehicle. The lake has so many moods that it takes as much speed and flexibility to portray as the face of a restless child!

20:45 Lying on my back between keying in measurements that Adam is taking of his sample of Elliptio complanata mussels, which abound in the lake here, my eye catches a meteor glowing for about 20 degrees of sky.  The breeze that rippled the lake at dusk is gone, and the smoke from our cooking fire rises straight upward.