Memorial Day Weekend

Memorial Day morning at Knoxville National Cemetery, which adjoins the historic Old Gray Cemetery in downtown Knoxville. I had to go into work for a couple of hours, but did so early enough that by the time I got off the sun was clear up and beautifully bright, and before the arrival of the daily haze we've had in the heat this past week. This monument is known as The Tennessee Monument, The Wilder Monument, or the Union Soldier Monument -- depending on what source you use.

Note: For more information about the monument at the Knoxville National Cemetery, click HERE for a rather interesting history, and, amazingly, the only photograph of the monument I could find on line. I think I'm going to fix that problem, and will be posting a photo soon! If you read the information, you'll note that I took a bit of artistic license with the monument, shortening the tower by about the height of the figure, in order to get the bits I wanted to fit on the page. I wanted to get the top against the sky -- the arches with the door and wreath -- and, most importantly, the nearby bright red, white, and blue flag.

And here are some Canadian geese along with their latest addition at Norris Lake on Sunday. There were several families with baby geese, and they were so cute! Ma and Pa Goose stayed close by, and didn't hesitate to take turns hissing at anyone or anything that came too close to Baby Goose. Since it was a holiday weekend the lake was MUCH too crowded for our taste. Still, we went out to do some start-of-season cleaning and maintenance on the boat and had to take just a short run up the lake and back. NEXT weekend, if the weather holds, we'll be out on the water playing! I do love summer ...

The technical bits: I did this with 2B and 6B pencils in my new Raffine sketchbook -- the very large one (10.4 " x 15.2"). There's not been enough time yet to pass judgement on this sketchbook -- the paper seems a bit more textured than what I'm used to, but I do love the size! However, it doesn't fit onto the scanner, so I had to use the camera, and found that it's much easier to photograph a watercolor than a graphite drawing. I had to adjust the contrast some to get these to look right, and this is as close as I could get it!