Day 207 Inktober PrOctober Day 6

Wildfire in the Forest

Western United States suffers from the drying out of the land– due to the increased temperatures caused by climate change. National Geographic has a great article about it. The  #doodleinstitute  prompt today is “forest,” and so my mind and thoughts are for those who have lost so much to the fires and smoke. While 30 people died from the fires, more than 1,000 may have died due to the intense smoke [Source: Sacramento Bee]. We’ve got to get a handle on how to help ourselves. There are solutions:

National Geographic

Wired

Environmental Defense Fund

YOUR SUPPORT NEEDED FOR A FRIEND: My friend and our school culture teacher, Marion Ives, lost mostly everything in the wildfire north of here in Washington State. If you can donate, here’s the link: Fundraiser SPENCE-IVES HOMESTEAD RANCH BURNS IN WILDFIRE. Much appreciated for the devastation felt by those close to our neighborhood.

For this art, I chose a frame of deep red for the fire and the fury of wildfires. I attempted to adjust a brush [Hartz] so when I dragged it horizontally it created a squiggly line whereby pressure in the middle would thicken it. I created those lines for the branches in lighter to darker colors and added in the trunk of the tree later. You can see the brightness from a far away fire and the blackened branches and undergrowth in the foreground.

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Mushrooms

Today’s  #Proctober’s Inktober prompt is mushrooms. Mushrooms are as much a part of the ecosystem as are forests and wildfires. Mushrooms, fungi, help clean up the forest when trees die [Source: Michigan State University extension]. Some mushrooms help trees in a symbiotic relationship of nutrient exchange [Source: Ministry of Forest and Range, British Columbia, Canada].

The art project for this therefore includes several plants and fungi, the word nature, and the root systems. I hope you like it.

Rodent

Rodent is the #inktober2020 prompt today. I chose the chipmunk, a hyperactive creature I spent many summers feeding sunflower seeds from hand while we vacationed at Lake Metigoshe in North Dakota.

This took me some time as drawing on paper is not my strength– no “undo!” My hands are a bit shaky so undo is important. I first drew it on my iPad using a public domain reference image to look at while drawing. Getting that done, I could use that sketch as my model for the actual ink drawing. I drew in pencil first, inked, and then added in pencil shading and the tree/grass. I rather wish I had not penciled in the background. I hope you like this one; it’s the Yellow Pine Chipmunk found in eastern Washington. Washington has four species of chipmunks– they are a lot more skittish around people because they are truly in the wilds. At the lake, the chipmunks were accustomed to people at the cabins. [Source: Slater Museum].

Mosquito

Finally, for #drawingdaily2020 today the “draw with me” prompt is “mosquito.” Ugh. If you do not want mosquitos, do NOT leave “standing water” around. Turn over all your plant pots. Add a pump to your bird feeder– you can get solar powered fountains. Just keep the water moving because mosquitos need that standing water to reproduce [Source: Washington Department of Health].

My mosquito is angry and mean, red and black, sipping water droplets on my leaf highway.

Mosquitos are thick in North Dakota– as a kid, a mosquito bite was nothing. A bit of calamine lotion stopped the itch. But, we never got one: we were covered and looked like polka dot people with the pink lotion to stop the itch so we would not scratch and get infected. Where I live now, in Washington, most communities spray for mosquitos and we are very careful about that standing water!

Hope you are all safe and well, and hope these little art challenges make you smile.