Day TWELVE | Reflecting on Mirror Lake

ReToday we woke up at 8:00 am, the extra hour of sleep was just what the doctor ordered.  After a hearty breakfast at the Yellowstone Lodge, it was time to pack the vans and head towards the park for our lessons.  For our warm up activity, we did two quick colored pencil drawings of the waterfalls.  We were given five minutes for our two-color sketch and ten minutes for our four-color drawing.  

Students frantically sketching the Lower Falls

After a quick laydown of of our materpieces, we continued our hike towards Ribbon Lake.  On the way to the lake we were introduced to a project that we would be assigned later in the day.  After our improptu lecture, we kept on trucking towards Ribbon Lake.  When we got there we ate lunch and began our watercolor postcards.  Many people thought these postcards were the best that they had made yet.  We also wrote haikus about the landscape:

Tranquil, quiet lake

Mysteries low in the hills

Nurture tired souls

(Emily)

A gem in the woods

Warm breeze invites my senses

I am connected

(Devon)

It was getting a bit late so we did a quick laydown and poetry reading so we hit the trails again.  Once again, we found ourselves by the beautiful falls and got a more comprehensive explanation for Julie's project.  We were supposed to identify patterns in nature and show where they were found in close, medium, and long ranges.  Most of us found this assignment a bit confusing but once we figured it out, we could not stop seeing the patterns everywhere.  

Emily sketching patterns in nature

After ANOTHER laydown, it was time to head back to the hotel to pin up our drafting assignments.  It was really nice to finally turn in our assignments after back-to-back all-nighters, and thinking about the assignment since Minneapolis.  Our hard work paid off with a pizza party thrown by the professors.  After dinner, we broke apart and all did our own things.  Some people took the oppurtunity to explore the town of West Yellowstone while others caught up on sleep or watched movies.  We were definitely ready to hit the hay after our long day.

Devon and Emily