August 7. At the hands of a master.

I'm stuck.

Yesterday I picked some butter-and-egg wildflowers. I called them wild snapdragons when I was a kid, but the books I have give them the butter-and-eggs name instead. I drew the flowers in my sketchbook. Then I drew them again and again. I don't expect my drawings to be fabulous or even good, but each drawing of the flowers yesterday left me more and more frustrated.

I set out to look for some instruction and inspiration. Awhile ago I picked up the book, Artist and Naturalist in Ethiopia by Louis Agassiz Fuertes and Wilfred Hudson Osgood, at the library because I'm studying Ethiopia and the book caught my eye. I like old books. Fuertes was the artist who, along with Osgood, went to Ethiopia to collect specimens for Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History in the 1930s. Fuertes was a top naturalist-artist and unfortunately he died in an accident soon after returning from his trip to Ethiopia. The book is his diary of the expedition, placed alongside the diary of his collegue, Osgood. The book doesn't keep me up at night turning pages, but I like learning about history from approaches such as this, and the paintings of the wildlife are definitely worth studying. Fuertes died decades before I was born, but right now, in 2008, he's my teacher.