Tag Archives: pequit brook

Pequit Brook #2 by Maris Van Vlack – RISD Student and MABA Intern

Posted on August 11, 2020 by Sean K.

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In my first post about the Pequit Brook, I focused on drawing the water, rocks, and landscape that exists in the brook area. The drawings in this second post focus on the smaller things that define the brook’s environment, like the plants and fungi that grow there. When trying to capture the key elements of a location, I think that it is important to keep shifting scale, going from wide landscapes to small details.

Some of the mushrooms growing along the Pequit Brook

You will notice many mushrooms popping up alongside the trails after it has rained. They come in red, orange, yellow, white, black, tan, and brown! I like the shapes that are created when pieces are broken off, like the mushrooms on the right in the drawing above.

Photo of an interesting texture on a black mushroom

Pictured below is a large group of Indian Pipe Plants, or Ghost Plants. They are often mistaken for fungi because they aren’t green. This is because they don’t have any chlorophyll. Instead of getting energy from the sun, like most plants, they steal nutrients from the roots of trees. In Massachusetts, the Ghost Plant is white or grayish white, sometimes with pink flowers.

Ghost Plants grow in moist, dark areas, and the biggest patch of them was at the end of the Pequit Brook Trail.

The shape of the stalk and flower reminds me of seahorses

*A bigger, experimental painting of a group of Ghost Plants using acrylic and gouache*

The drawing above is of the Muskratweed plant. It grows in big stalks that are 3-8 feet tall. When it leans over into the brook, it becomes part of the whole landscape and the flowers add a pop of pinkish-white color to the scene. In this drawing, you can see the small details, like the clusters of fluffy flowers.

The plants and mushrooms that I notice by the side of the Pequit Brook are always changing; some begin to die and new ones appear. This selection of things is a good representation of one moment during the summer.

My name is Maris Van Vlack, and I will be blogging for the summer of 2020! I am a rising sophomore at the Rhode Island School of Design, with a major in Textiles and a concentration in Drawing. I used to take homeschool classes at the Museum of American Bird Art and have had my artwork exhibiting in their Taking Flight Exhibit for young bird artists.

I am especially interested in working with unusual materials in my work, and am inspired by plants, animals, and the patterns found in nature. This summer, I will be creating a guide for the MABA trails with sketches and paintings. I will be recording and writing about my observations, and sharing them through these blog posts. Hopefully this will be an educational and inspiring resource, and will motivate you to sketch what you see when you visit MABA this summer!

Pequit Brook at MABA by Maris Van Vlack – RISD Student and MABA Intern

Posted on August 11, 2020 by Sean K.

The Pequit Brook runs alongside a large part of the Main Loop Trail at MABA. You can also reach the brook by taking the Pequit Brook Trail, which ends in a clearing right by the water’s edge. Many creatures live by the brook, including Spotted Salamanders and Eastern Red-backed Salamanders. I’ve also seen many songbirds, and many times when I approach the brook I see a Great Blue Heron disappearing into the trees. (I have yet to get a good picture of it because it flies away so quickly!)

The animals and plants at the brook are exciting, but this series of sketches focuses on the brook itself. For me, drawing the brook means capturing the feeling of water in motion. When drawing bodies of water, I identify the places where there is bright sunlight hitting the water. I also try to show which way the water is flowing around rocks and other obstacles. I find that ripples in the water can be more easily understood with line studies.

Line study of water currents in the brook

In the piece below, I used watercolor for the body of the painting, later adding opaque white gouache for the highlights. When painting water, make sure that you use the colors that you see instead of the colors that your brain thinks should be there. Large bodies of calm water often look blue because they are reflecting the sky, but smaller streams don’t actually look blue. The Pequit Brook is so shallow that light hits the rocks and dirt on the bottom of the brook and comes back up through the water. This makes the water appear different shades of brown, grey, yellow, red, and green, depending on what is underneath the water.

When painting rocks, I pay attention to how they interact with the water: whether the water is flowing over them, around them, or both. Rocks are each a different shape, and showing this in a drawing will make it more interesting. It is important to notice which parts of the rock are angular and which parts are smooth. Drawing flat sides of rocks and noticing how the light is hitting them will help with this.

A pen drawing of a rock near the brook, focusing on the unique angles this rock creates

I find that the brook looks different every time I draw it because it is always in motion. It is one of my favorite places to sketch!

The splendor and solace of snow…nature in a minute

Posted on March 14, 2018 by Sean K.

Although spring is right around the corner, winter is hanging on with three Nor’easters in the past two weeks. After all the shoveling and arduous cleanup (huge thanks to our property manager Owen Cunningham), we took an hour to snowshoe the wildlife sanctuary and enjoy the quiet and calm that always seems to follow a large storm. The trees were blanketed with a thick snow and everywhere you looked the wildlife sanctuary was painted white.

The meadow was blanketed with nearly two feet of snow and only one set of snow shoe tracks.

The start of the main loop trail.

This trail leads to our vernal pool. In less than a month, as you walk up the hill you will be treated to an auditory sensation as a loud chorus of wood frogs welcomes spring. It is amazing how quickly nature turns in the spring. In two months, the pine forest floor will be covered with pink lady’s slippers that will be using the snow melt to thrive in May.