"Over Pamlico Sound (Brown Pelican)"
Graphite pencil on watercolor paper
5 x 8

I love this little drawing. This is a scene from the Outer Banks, on the Pamlico Sound side where is can be extremely calm and quite. I actually sat on this reference for almost five years before drawing it. My family and I were renting a house in Avon, North Carolina, just north of the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse on the sound side of Route 12. I found myself taking walks to the end of the road that the house was on and following a trail that led back through some really scrubby and dense trees, eventually spitting you out onto the edge of a marsh. Skirting the marsh, I would then make my way to the sound where it was so quite you could get wrapped up in the serenity of the solitude and completely miss all the wildlife swimming and flying around you.

So there I am standing at the edge of the marsh with my feet in the sound staring out across the open waters. It’s an overcast morning. You can barely make out the horizon and there is a haziness in the atmosphere. Dwelling on my thoughts, I just caught movement out of the side of my peripheral vision — it was a brown pelican skimming the water. I love pelicans! I think they are beautiful, fascinating birds. I purposely made this drawing simple and sketchy so that I could recreate that serene, hazy morning while keeping the feel of the open expanse of the sound.