Farmland grid road trip

Pencil and Finetec watercolor on A5 Handbook watercolor sketchbook.

Have you ever wonder what does it look like to drive the roads of those enormous farmland grids when you are up on a plane looking down from the window? I do visit those roads fairly often. My husband and I go out to drive on the roads of farmland, specially during the autumn because of the colors and the harvesting of crops. This time we wanted to get lost, no use of GPS or phones, we wanted to head the road the old fashion way. What we like about these trips is the lack of traffic which allows us to enjoy the landscape as slow as you want. Through the years we have had good and bad experiences. One of them, I remember on my first years of sketching, I wanted to sketch wind turbines, we intended to approach a house to ask permission to sit in the property and sketch the turbines on it, but an uncle Grumpy came to shout us out of his property. Scary, really scary. We ended up lost in the corn fields right under the blades of one of this towers. It's a humbling experience. 

Pencil and Finetec watercolor on A5 Handbook watercolor sketchbook.

We also have stopped on the side of the road to see up close one of those machines on wheels to harvest corn.  The driver suspended his activity, a man as beautiful as a Greek God came out to ask us if we needed something, we replied we were there to watch the landscape, he thought we were on trouble and wanted to offer help, what a kind man.

Pencil and Finetec watercolor on A5 Handbook watercolor sketchbook.

Illinois is known in the USA for producing corn and soybeans. Farmers alternate the crops every year. This past week we saw many corn fields, some fields already harvested and others not yet.  Every field in these grids always have a house, trees, some silos, farm equipment and barns. These sketches are all from this trip last week. It was a pleasant ride, very relaxing.