Friday, June 3, 2011

Twisters

There's been a lot of tornados lately. Sometimes it seems like more of every kind of natural disaster is threatening our planet these days. Recently tornados have been happening in unlikely places like in the South and NorthEast USA. Twisters are nothing new to anyone who has lived in the Mid-West however. When I lived in Eastern Kansas as a kid, I witnessed many.


Here's some sketches of your classic "Wizard of Oz" twister.
And I remembered to add in some notes, Susan! I left that piece of paper in the foreground deliberately to remind myself to mention something. If you keep a piece of watercolor paper in your sketchbook, put it under the page you are painting on, and the page beneath with not wrinkle.


Most of these never hit the ground, thankfully, but a local school did get hit and we had to go on half-day sessions with them for a whole year. When the air-raid sirens would blow on our block, all the neighbors, kids and dogs ran out into the streets to see what was happening. Then if we saw something, we'd all go back inside our houses, under picnic tables in our basements and wait for the sirens to sound that it was all clear.


We never saw many hit the ground, because of course, we were hiding in the basement.

4 comments:

  1. I'm grinning from seeing your note to me about notes :)

    And I would never have thought to stick a piece of watercolor paper behind my page in my sketch book!!! Thank you for that tip!

    Your tornado examples are all absolutely wonderful. That top exhibits such a menacing atmosphere and denotes a lot of power!

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  2. Thanks Susan! They were fun! Why not give it a try?

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  3. Neat art and photos. I am terrified at even the thought of a tornado and have nightmares about them all the time even though I have never lived in an area that is prone to them.

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  4. I wouldn't like dreaming about them either Jennifer, and YES they are terrifying. If I were you, I'd be interested in finding out what dreaming of tornados means.

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