This past week I haven't had much of a chance to move forward with the book but I carved out a little time today to piece together some of the pictures that I've taken so far.  Last week Stella and I went out a couple of times in the beautiful weather to take pictures of the quickly advancing season.  Although I don't have the first scene, of the woods done, I wanted to find a place to represent the next setting of the story, the stream.  On the Nottingham side of Pawtuckaway State Park is a boat launch area and the water runs underneath a small wooden bridge and becomes a stream further down.  With Stella strapped into her Bjorn I wandered around taking pictures of the pond, trees, rocks, water, dirt and the stream itself.  It was just one of the beautiful afternoons that we've had lately, absolutely picture perfect weather, colors, air, temperature, scenery.  The kind of moment you wish you could store and come back to later to take a hike, eat an apple, go on a hayride, hunt with your bird dog-whatever your version of fall perfection is, I was there.  Here are a couple scenic pictures I took that day.

The tree in my illustration is one of the things that I've been trying to work out.  I thought it would be cool to use a picture of the bark of an oak tree to create the tree trunk but found that when the texture is blown up that much it's too busy.  I remembered that on the way to Maria's school there is a large tree close to the road that looks like it has a hollow from a distance even though I think it's where a large branch was cut off and healed.

It actually helps a lot to look at a picture of the picture because you can eliminate the unfinished edges and tunnel your vision.  I'm not sure about the forest floor, again I think too busy.  The blue of the sky is a picture of the sky and for the green I zoomed in on an oak leaf.  Still working on the squirrels!  They have been frequenting the feeding station I set up and I've been snapping photos although I don't know how they're coming out since they're on film.  I think I need to finish up that film next week and develop it in case I decide it's not working I can try something else.