Christmas comes once more

Most of my recent sketching has been in five minutes grabbed here and there.


Culver's often has a few fun seasonal decorations.
We spent time in a waiting room with three themed Christmas trees, each with a colorful topper: a snowman, a star, a crown.

Railroad Crossing

Right side of the tracks

Coal cars

Every so often, we wait for a train to pass through the grain elevator hamlet of Kileville, and I do a quick sketch. It's fun to imagine what's in the railway cars, where they came from, and where they are going.

I grew up on sad train songs like Wreck of the Old 97 and Hobo Bill's Last Ride. Railway transportation doesn't seem to have changed much since then. Watching the freight cars roll by takes me on a little trip back in time.

Farm market

Yutzy's farm market added an open air fruit and vegetable barn this summer. Garage doors are raised on the west side, allowing easy unloading of produce and air circulation.

Haven of Rest cemetery

Formerly Gospel Light cemetery.

Kileville, again

Sometimes you just need to get out to the country and breathe. Looking north over spring fields, across 161, the path Tecumseh blazed and an old Pony Express route. The insulated cable traversing the lower right corner marks the parking spot. (Oops, the horizon line is too near the middle.)

“Setting aside time each day to become absorbed in just being- in the present moment, alone in nature, - will leave you refreshed and refocused. . . . . Nothing spectacular, everything spectacular. The essential magic occurs when pencil meets paper and the eye really sees a tree. The Process of Seeing is what counts, not how good a drawing Is. Being A Witness brings a sense of belonging, of compassion, of responsibility.” -Clare Walker Leslie 

 More reading: Jan Blencowe, Three easy ways to begin keeping a nature journal.

Poppies

Kileville, Two Views

Train, from the west

Looking north.

Farm Market in the Fall

Leaves courtesy of Koosje Koene's Fall Feast tutorial.

Communion of the Saints