photography: Mobius Meadows Farmstead.

 I spent a few days at a friend's farm. Mostly taking photos of items for his website and social media. I also took some of the animals there. 

Mobius Meadows Farmstead photos

I spent a few days in the scalding heat at my friend's farm in Vermont. One day we had an hour of rain which was a relief and produced some really cool clouds. I also got to finally try and photograph the hummingbirds and got some OK images.  

Illustration: grange - Möbius Meadows Farmstead

 

The barn at my friend's farm in Vermont. I drew it when it was much smaller. The original barn was hanging off a steep hill and in bad shape. he had it moved to a safer spot and built a much bigger barn around it. This is in the style of my last few colour drawings done in Procreate with maybe a bit more painting detail than the rest. 

Illustration: Alpacas

 I have wanted to make cartoon versions of some of the animals on the farm in Vermont. Earlier attempts went... not so well. As I have been cartooning my heart out lately for a client I gave the alpacas another try and I think they came out ok. The sheep... not so much. I will need to rethink how I want to draw them.  Made with affinity Designer. 

Illustration: linge: Möbius Meadows

 This was done as challenge. I used Sketchbook with only 2 paint brushes and one dry brush. The paint brushes act like real ones for the most part and it felt a little like oil painting. I painted each laundry item on a separate layer to avoid confusion but i merged them together when I was I done. Not having to worry about only have 4 layers on the iPad anymore was very freeing. Despite using the app for a decade I have never tried colour in it for some reason. 

I did a sketch and took reference photos at Möbius Meadows Farmstead in the spring. The laundry was strung up in the glassed in porch which gets really hot, even in winter so they dry quickly and I thought it might be interesting to paint it. My friend who owns the farm really liked it and said I turned his laundry in art! His name is Art as well so that always sounds confusing to me. 

Click for a larger image to see more detail. 

Illustration: Birdhouse, Möbius Meadows Farmstead

 A rare occasion where I was excited seeing this come along. I am really happy with the painting technique I used and the realism of it. its not a complicated subject which is maybe why I think it worked out so well. 

I painted this in Krita and it really reminded  me why I love to use the program. I blocked out all the colours first on different layers and then added painted details little by little to get the aged wood effect with different colours.

illustration: Art, mais 2022 @ Mobius Meadows Farmstead

 I did a trick my friend Mike Luce uses and took some reference photos in a sneaky way so I could do a portrait of my friend Art on his farm in Vermont. Mike does it to get more natural poses and I did it because no one wants to pose for me. I still would like to have done portraits of most of my friends so this stealth method might just get me there, eventually. I wasn't going to show this if he was mad i did it or did not like it and he wasn't and he did - so here it is. 

This is in the style of a portrait I did in December of my friend Keamy and my plan is do all the friend portrait like this. I used Procreate since I can draw anywhere and when I have a few minutes. 

Illustration: granges, Colchester Vermont

 Another one I wanted to use only black line work on. These two barns are down the street from Mobius Meadows farmstead where I like to spend as much time as I can. I see them all the time and never bothered to draw them until now. I thought about putting in the trees behind the barn but I think they would have made the illustration too dense and would have taken the point of interest away. 

Illustrations: Mount Royal & bird house(Vermont)

 A structure on Mont Royal got my attention a month or 2 ago and I started drawing it about 3 weeks ago. I was able to get a lot done while waiting 3 ½ hours at the bus terminal for a late bus ride to Boston Thursday and then I did the rest while staying with my dad. Used a greyscale technique with some highlights to show more depth. 

The second drawing a bird house at Mobius Meadows Farmstead in Vermont I did a quick sketch of while there and took some reference phots and got some of it finally inked in while I was sitting with my mom in hospital a few hours Friday afternoon. I then finished it waiting for the bus to take me home. This was all pen strokes except for the watercolour splash in the background. I didn't want to use any additional "tricks" like grey areas or white pencil, just line. 

Photos: Mobius meadows farmstead

 After not being to the farm for  2 ½ years, I was finally able to go back and see my friends and walk around in the great outdoors. The alpacas still let me pet them which was nice and I was able to take some photos at the farmstead and at the river across the street. 

Mobius Meadows Farmstead website

It's literally been years since I have designed a website. (Other than my own that is).  One the last year my good good friend Art Klossner has decided to sell some of the products he makes on his farm in Vermont and wanted to help out so I volunteered to design the site.  Now it's finally up and running. 

Mobius Meadows Farmstead website

I also design the original logos, but in the end he decided to use one from someone else who incorporated a little ball of yarn into it and its quite nice. My first thoughts were to do something classy that included a mobius loop which was the logo for almost right up until the site went live. He was feeling not great about ti so I made another more fun and light. Honestly I like them both and designing logos while frustrating at point can be fun. I guess the same can be said of websites, though I enjoyed this one much more than those in the past because I stopped using Dreamweaver and switched to Sparkle which is much more like a page layout program and doesn't even allow you to code. The closest is comes to that is letting you embed things but even that is very visually done.



So I'm glad to too this on and glad it's finally online! Not sure I'll be doing more sites in future as that market share has been mostly eaten up by do it yourself/design in your browser companies that set up for free and make their money by selling you the domain and renting the server space. 

This is the logo decided on in the end by Tim Palin.