Welcome to February – and my phenology wheel update! I promised I’d share how it went, and today’s video has some treats in it – from a walk through my neighborhood (with birds!) to looking at others’ wheels, painting my last January entry and setting up the February one. Let’s go!

Tutorial: Phenology Wheel Update

Watch the video below and scroll to the end to leave comments or questions — or click HERE to watch it on YouTube and leave comments over there. I read both dutifully!

Lavender: final Phenology Wheel entry for January

I’ve been asking my pups to show me green plants to use for entries – so they’ve been LOVING this month of walks! Normally they both pull in different directions, but if one is permitted an extra few moments of sniffing, the other joins in and doubles the time spent there. ha!

The phenology project has changed how I experience my walks; now I’m slowing down, looking closely at the plants all around. Sniffing the leaves. Examining  how branches fan out from the stem/trunk. Mentally “marking” plants for future days, as I worried a little that I might have to resort to dandelions if I ran out of greens! But that wasn’t needed, whew!

If you decide to follow in my footsteps and have neighbors with interesting plants, if you can ask for a tiny branch to take with you, that’d be best. But in January during the mornings, there wasn’t anyone around for me to ask….so I took the smallest piece I could from the back or underneath, so that I wouldn’t create any broken branches where they are seen.

Last tweaks

In January I mentioned that I’d created the snowflake in the middle in wash AND ink – but that my first entry with no ink gave me the thought I should have skipped the ink. Given that this is just for me, it’s perfectly fine to glue another shape on top, so I redid the snowflake with masking fluied (same technique as in the previous video) – and just did the border around it when the circle didn’t fit quite perfectly.

I also decided to trim the white edge from around the outside, inking the very edge to make sure its all black.

In this picture you can also see I messed up January 4 – had trouble weith the leaf smooshing, so I glued a new piece on top.

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Monthly Phenology Wheel

For this wheel I’ll be choosing my favorite entry for the month and painting it here where it has more “room.” I think it’ll serve as a “key” or “index” for the book when I get the year done. I may write notes in the white space about about what I was capturing that month. Because one day I may well forget. lol!

Weekly Phenology Wheel

This one’s going to be a bit of a cacophony….I know even when looking for green plants, I noticed other things. Birds calling. Moss on a wall of rocks. An intensely red leaf, a tree profile. This one gives me a place to sketch that thing without interrupting my other wheel, and helps me realize I can sketch something that won’t go onto the main wheel for the month.

February Phenology Wheel

For the coming month it’ll be skies! Initially my thought is to attempt early morning skies, but…well, it might not always work. For one it won’t all be colorful, for two if I oversleep even a moment or two I could miss the color. So i’ll be giving myself permission to paint a sky from another time in the day, and will record that time on the wheel. We get some glorious sunsets out the back of the house. But there might also be a spectacular cloud formation that I’ll capture too.

Through February I’ll be a little bit out of pocket, and I don’t really know how much. (For all I know I could be on my phone way more than usual?) I’ve got a few surgeries with surrounding doctors appointments, so if you send in an email, please be patient. I’ve worked hard at getting my content ready ahead, and also finally paid someone to fix some website things at art-classes, so I’m hoping everything stays stable while I’m dealing with medical stuff. Thanks in advance for your patience!

It’s not too late to start!

I posted one of my wheel entries on Reddit, and was excited to see so many responding that they’ll be starting. One posted a picture of their first day – they started on the 28th!!! I’m such a neard I’d have to wait til the first, but hey I’m impressed by that dedication. No time like the present!

So whenever you see this post, know you can just dive in. There’s not a need to wait! Your month can run from the 17th to the 17th or something – no problem!