The Thrilling Sketchbook, The Hand-colored Linocut

Acadian Flycatcher, Wood Thrush, Red-eyed Vireo, Field Sketches with Watercolor by Ken Januski.

You might think that after a number of years of making art, abstract, realistic, or otherwise that it would be easy to get jaded. In some cases that is true. I certainly did with all the IMPORTANT ART that started to be shown around the 1980s. In fact it was hard to go to a gallery and find art that wasn't important. All that important art all over the place. Little matter that is was self-declared IMPORTANT ART. If I had gotten a gallery show at that time, when I was still doing abstract art, I would have tried to have it called UNIMPORTANT ART.  Sad to say the art world has only come to take itself more seriously in the years since then, though the huge sums that are used to speculate in art these days makes it easy to keep the illusion up.

But I digress............. Even though it is possible to get jaded in art, or any other field, there is one thing that is most likely to bring back the thrill of art to me: someone's sketchbook. It used to be the sketchbook of people like Rembrandt, Degas, etc. But since I've turned to art based on birds it is more likely the field sketchbooks of numerous bird artists. Of course most of the most famous and best-selling bird artists don't seem to do sketching in the field. And it shows. But for those artists that do I can't find anything more exciting. Whether it is the work of a known or unknown artist I find it endlessly rewarding and exciting to see the field work of accomplished naturalistic artists. And the best ones, or at least the ones that move me the most, seem to combine sketches with watercolor.

Given all that you'd think I'd be doing that sort of exciting fieldwork myself. Well it's not that I haven't tried. Unfortunately I generally fail miserably. So it's with great pleasure that I show the two pages from a small Moleskine sketchbook above. The Acadian Flycatcher, Wood Thrush and Red-eyed Vireo were all seen and sketched in Philadelphia over the last three days. This afternoon I added watercolor to them in the studio.  As usual there are a few things that aren't completely accurate about the portrayals. And I could go back, look at reference photos, and correct them. But that I can do in new versions. With these I just wanted to leave them as I sketched them. I'm happy to say that for the first time I excited about my own hand-colored field sketches!

Female American Kestrel with Dead American Robin. Hand-colored Linocut by Ken Januski.

And speaking of hand-coloring I also completed the linocut of the female American Kestrel eating a freshly killed American Robin with watercolor yesterday. 16 of the prints were left as black prints on white paper. But I wanted to experiment with adding watercolor to 8 of them. Most of the motivation for this was due to the subtle coloring of the kestrel. It is something best captured in watercolor. But I didn't want to do a finicky version in watercolor alone. So hand-coloring a print seemed like a good idea.

After you work in the limitations of printmaking it's shocking to all of a sudden be able to use the freedom of painting in a print. So here no print is identical. They are very similar but the brushwork and color in the foreground for instance is slightly different from print to print. That also is very exciting. Both prints are now for sale on Etsy.

Criminal Neglect of a Sketchbook

Red Admiral, White-tailed Deer, Common Whitetail and Great Blue Heron. Field Sketches by Ken Januski.

Soon after I started doing artwork based on birds I bought a Moleskine large sketchbook, large being just 5x8.25 inches. It's actually smaller than I'd like but it also fits perfectly in the back pocket of my jeans, something that the Stillman and Birn sketchbooks that I like so much do not do.

The two pages above are the last two pages from sketchbook number five. The caption explains the sketches with the exception of an apology for the White-tailed Deer. I rarely draw mammals from life. But when I found this deer staring at me from about 10 feet away, debating I'm sure whether to run or not, I decided I had to get down what I could. Seconds later he was gone and all I had was a vague visual memory to put down on paper. Unlike birds most mammals, at least in the face, seem harder to get in a sketch. As with humans the softness of the face is hard to get down with lines.

In any case I'm glad I tried. I also tried one of my few butterflies from life, a Red Admiral that cooperated by staying still for a bit. The reason I show these pages though is not to show what I've seen recently but to note how bad I've been over the last year about field sketching.

Much as I try to do sketches when I'm out I'm generally shocked when I look through a sketchbook and see the dates of the drawings in them. There are 96 pages I think. How long should a sketchbook like that last for someone who sketches frequently? One month? Two? Three if there weren't any vacations where I tend to draw more? The answer, on average since I began over seven years ago is 11 months!!

That is always shocking to me and works out to only about 8 pages per month or 2 per week. What's worse though is that the drawings above are the last pages of a sketchbook that took over 15 months to finish!! I'm really not sure why. Perhaps I spent more time on photos? Perhaps I spent more time in the studio working on prints? I don't know.

By the time I finished this sketchbook the other day though it was falling apart, the binding in tatters.

Eastern Phoebe, Gray Catbird, Acadian Flycatcher and Tufted Titmouse. Field Sketches by Ken Januski.

Yesterday I began a new sketchbook while walking along the Wissahickon in Philadelphia. Again the captions explain the drawings pretty well with the possible exception of that big, odd-looking Tufted Titmouse. It was harassing a White-breasted Nuthatch and I never got really good looks at it. So I put down what I could and then tried to finish up at home. Well that didn't work and that explains the white around the head and elsewhere. I used it to try to cover up mistakes in ink with white gouache. This happens almost every time I try to fix something once I get back in the studio. The only good part of it is that it generally forces me to go look at my photos or guidebooks afterwards to figure out what it was that I got so wrong.

Obviously neither of these pages exhibit the best field studies I've ever done. But they do remind me, and hopefully readers as well, of the virtues of having a sketchbook and using it quite often. It also makes what could be a relatively dull walk in the woods, at least in terms of seeing something new, a consuming adventure. Regardless of the fads and trends of contemporary art I think that there will always be a place for sketching.

Flycatcher Time

Willow Flycatcher in Willow. Watercolor Sketch by Ken Januski

I'm not sure why but I've been taken with flycatchers for the last five years or more. While most birders are bored to death by the Acadian Flycatchers and Eastern Wood Pewees that seem to be ubiquitous at the nearby Wissahickon from mid-May until sometime in August I always try to see them when I hear them.

Because flycatchers, at least the ones that are normal in this part of the country, can be both similar and drab I like to be able to look at them and try to both see and portray their differences. I really can't say if my motivation is primarily artistic or primarily educational, i.e. learning how to easily differentiate them, especially if they're not singing.

A later arrival than the Acadian and the Pewee is the Willow Flycatcher, pictured above. As far as I can tell it is one of the very latest breeding birds to arrive, at least in northwest Philadelphia. Today I happened to get a good look for a couple of minutes in my scope while birding Morris Arboretum. Two field sketches are below. Unfortunately he flew before I could spend any time on the head.

I did spend a fair amount of time looking at it but never really studied how it fit the rest of the body. So the sketch on left page below is a bit off when it comes to the head. The small watercolor sketch above tries to combine the field sketches with knowledge gained from my many photos of Willow Flycatchers.

Of course none of them were in that exact position. So I spent quite a bit of time drawing the underlying pencil sketch in the hopes of getting a complete rendering based on the field sketches below.

This is another sketch in a Stillman and Birn Gamma sketchbook and I've pushed the paper as far as it will go in terms of holding numerous washes. So this is done. Perhaps another time I'll try another more developed watercolor on actual watercolor paper. Or perhaps I'll end up greatly abstracting this in a print. For now it's just one more attempt to put down on paper the subtle differences between our various eastern flycatchers.

One nice thing about sketching birds from life is that even what many would consider boring birds are always interesting, mainly because you realize how very much more there always is to learn. It is and endless, and rewarding, challenge.

Willow Flycatcher, Carolina Chickadee, Tree Swallow Gray Catbird. Field Sketches by Ken Januski.

Rescued by Rembrandt

Solitary Sandpiper at Morris Arboretum. Conte sketch by KenJanuski

I haven't been showing much here recently mainly because I'm of two minds about it, or more likely three or forur or five. In other words I've got too much thinking and second-guessing going on.

I first experienced this as a graduate student in studio art at the University of California at Berkeley. One advisor would come in, talk about my work, and often suggest certain changes. Within 24 hours another advisor would come in and do the same. Almost inevitably some of it was directly contradictory.

The end result was that I had to think for myself, sift through all the information and decide what I wanted to do. This wasn't too difficult because I've rarely painted to please others. I paint what I want. Still when you get opinions on your work they always continue to rattle around in  the back of your mind, like nagging little voices.

This isn't necessarily bad. It probably helps to confirm me or anyone else in their own decisions. Years ago I  think I startled some of my friends by saying that artists and CEOs were similar: they both had to listen to others but eventually  make their own decisions, and  live with the consequences. I'm not sure how many  CEOs would agree, thinking I assume that what they do is far more significant. But for good, serious art I think the decision making is similar.

In any  case I've had a lot of thoughts rattling around in my head recently. This was compounded when I got two emails within a 10 day period regarding  my work. One was from a well-known  artists organization. It offered a critique of my work,  very complimentary toward some of my linocuts, and fairly critical about others. All of this was done with the best of intentions and was overall quite complimentary. But the words hurried and pay more attention to anatomy still are in the forefront of my mind.

On the other hand I also received a completely unsolicited email from someone who'd seen my work online and very  much  liked it, especially the warbler portrayals. She normally didn't like wildlife art but to her my work seemed an exception. Since I entered the world of wildlife art with great foreboding, not liking much of it myself, this truly rang a bell. It was very appreciated.

Unfortunately now I think of both of these every time I touch pen,  pencil or brush to the surface. Should I worry about anatomy or not? When does anatomical accuracy, especially that of surface rather than underlying structure,  hurt rather than help the artisitic quality of the work?  Just as in graduate school both views are valid and valuable. I just have to decide what's true and what's important to me.

Another factor in my indecisiveness,  though to a lesser degree, was another rejection from Birds in Art. Yesterday I happened upon two blog posts alro regarding rejection in BIA: Sandra Blair and Susan Fox. I'm getting used to being rejected there. The one difference I think with me is that I expect it. And I also don't mind it all that much.

Why? Well unfortunately I'm never really all that thrilled with what I see in the catalogs. I know that it's heresy to say this. And I'd prefer not to say it. I've been included in the last two Society of Wildlife Artists shows in London. I won't this year because I just can't afford all of the costs involved. So I won't apply. But if I'd been rejected there I think it would bother me much more. Some of the artists I most admire are members of the SWLA. It would bother me not to be in. But I'd also see it as something to strive for, a prod to get my work good enough to show with artists I admire so much. Sadly this is never the case when I look through a BIA catalog. I never feel the same desire to work harder. Instead I feel it's best not to apply, that I'm wasting my time and money. Only working in a style not true to myself will ever have a chance of success there.

Some of those SWLA members, and other artists I very much admire,  also show in Birds in Art. But for whatever reason the catalog just always leaves me cold, even though it's a very high quality production.  Every year I flip through the catalog, not reading anything, just looking at pictures  to see what strikes me. It's the same way that I view big museum shows. First I want to see my immediate reaction. Later I can see what my  reaction is after being filtered through the text, ancillary information, etc. Almost without exception I'm not moved by anything I see in the BIA catalog. Only afterwards as I look at it for the second, third, or fourth time,  perhaps after reading the text as well, do I see the worthiness of the work. And I really do. I can eventually find much to admire in most of what I see. But every year I wish it would just hit me the first time through. I'm afraid I'm just on the very periphery of the type of art shown in BIA. This in turn reminds me of the recent appreciative email about my warbler works. Perhaps I have a very, very small audience, one that also would often be left cold by the BIA catalog. (One day later there is something I should add about the catalog. I've always very much enjoyed the essays that introduce the catalog when there is a Master Artist that is featured for the year. Whether it's artists I already like or ones that I'm fairly lukewarm too I almost always end up with a greater appreciation for the artist and their work when I'm finished reading it. In some ways this makes the entire catalog worthwhile even when I'm disappointed in the work that is actually in the show.)

With all of this in the back of my mind I've done various studies recently, most for possible linocuts. And I've looked through my  photos and sketches,  over and over and over, looking for a new subject. None have led anywhere. Too many voices rattling around. How can I do the type of wildlife art I want to do? Should I continue to do what I want to do, or should I try to go more in the direction of what I think someone else wants? This always seems like a mistake to me to I continue to work towards doing what I want to do, towards what looks good and fresh to me.

Then for whatever reason, possibly this recent post at The Best Artists, I got out Volume One of The Drawings of Rembrandt by Seymour Slive.What a breath of fresh air!! Though I admire all of Rembrandt's sketches it was the animals that struck  me most this time. Who has done better sketches of lions? Who has captured the feeling of a lion like this? The same is true of people. If you  look at a Rembrandt sketch you often see that just one line functions as a nose. A hand might almost seem to be a blob. BUT it reads as though it is a hand,  with real weight, attached to a  real moving body. Sometimes that hand will seem heavy as a five pound sack of flour. At other times it will seem as light as a  feather,  ready to waft off in the breeze. This is what Rembrandt captures with just a few lines.

Out of curiosity I also got out the only other Rembrandt book  I own, called The World of Rembrandt, from  Time-Life books. Both of these are very old by the way. Though I've studied Art History at both Berkeley and Cornell Rembrandt always escaped my attention. I have no idea why especially  as  I bought both of these  books long before I attended  either school. I can only guess that I saw his drawings somewhere when I was  very  young and decided I needed to see more of them. In any case the Time-Life book also includes paintings and in them too  you can see his incredible ability to capture the life of what he paints. He seems to have a physical empathy for everything he sees.

I think what really  hit me over the head in  looking at his work was how different it was from  work based on photos, particularly that of so much wildlife art. I did find one sketch of a Bird of Paradise, the only bird in the book as far as I could tell. It's not my favorite but still I like it. Today though  most artists would render every  feather. They wouldn't capture the entire bird. So much wildlife art crops out the full figure of a bird and instead focuses on the surface details of just one part of the bird. I prefer to see the whole bird, to see it as a living thing. I can of course only make the wildest guess as to what a contemporary Rembrandt would look like. But my guess is that it would show the same sense of liveliness and empathy for the subject portrayed, not in a cute, endearing way, but in a way that seems to actually feel the physical pose of each subject portrayed.

Female Rose-breasted Grosbeak. Watercolor sketch by Ken Januski

To make a long story short, well more or less at this late stage of the game, I've tried a couple of broader works since looking at Rembrandt. One is a female Rose-breasted Grosbeak, done from a photo of a bird seen at Magee Marsh about a month ago. I deliberately avoided using a pencil sketch and forced myself to work  more broadly, more like Rembrandt. I also tried the large Conte drawing of a Solitary Sandpiper at top of post, also based on a photo of a bird seen at Morris Arboretum earlier this year. It was incredibly refreshing to force myself to avoid sketching in all the information that was shown in the photo.

Great Blue Heron and Singing Acadian Flycatcher. Field sketch by Ken Januski

It has been non-stop rain here for the last few days so I've done little outside work outside of this sketch of a Great Blue Heron and singing Acadian Flycatcher, done in between storms. But when I next head out I think my Conte crayons will be with me, and Rembrandt rattling around in the back of my head.

Homeboys(and girls) - Early June 2013

Zabulon Skipper, Acadian Flycatcher and Eastern Pondhawk. Watercolor by Ken Januski

Zabulon Skipper, Acadian Flycatcher, Gray Catbird, Veery. Field sketches by Ken Januski

Try as I might I can't find any lingering migrant warblers. They seem to have moved on and now it's mainly the summer breeders that I see on our walks. That's fine. It really is as it should be. But each time spring migration ends it is shocking how quickly it has passed. It almost makes you want to give up sleep during the month of May.

We have seen a few birds that I'm still not sure are migrants or breeders. The Willow Flycatcher at Morris Arboretum, which we see each year, is most likely a breeder but I'd like to prove it this year. The Yellow-billed Cuckoo that we saw at the Breeding Bird Census at Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education last Saturday is even more of a question. Could it be breeding there? The habitat seems suitable but I've never seen it other than in May or early June.

I wanted to include it in the watercolor at  top but it was hard enough  to torture the Acadian Flycatcher into the composition. A bird perched even higher like the cuckoo just would never have worked.

I didn't see all of the species seen here at the same time and location. The Zabulon Skipper was seen in our yard and then also today along the Wissahickon. The Eastern Pondhawk, another first of year species like the skipper, was seen at Morris Arboretum on Sunday. And this Acadian is from a field sketch from today. As  I think about it a Willow Flycatcher might have been a better choice since all three of these species would be likely at Morris.

The other species seen today include a very perky Gray Catbird, another Zabulon Skipper, one of many Veeries, and a very small Blue-gray Gnatcatcher. In a sense they are homeboys and homegirls. This is their home for the next few months.

The watercolor is done on Stillman and Birn 9x12 inch Delta paper. I've always liked all of the Stillman and Birn sketchbooks for working through compositional ideas. This is a somewhat outlandish composition. But I don't like dull ones for my own work. So I keep experimenting.

To me that is part of the fun - to show familiar birds and other fauna in unexpected ways. Eventually I hope to return to linocuts. This sketch is a possibility for one but my guess is that it is currently far too complex. But you never know. One day, soon I hope, one of these will seem just perfect for a lino.

A Day Without Warblers

Bay-breasted Warbler. Watercolor by Ken Januski.

Black and White Warbler. Watercolor by Ken Januski.



Black-throated Green Warbler. Watercolor by Ken Januski.

Black-throated Green Warbler. Watercolor by Ken Januski

Baltimore Oriole et al. Field Sketch by Ken Januski

After all the warblers of Magee Marsh, seen with very little obfuscating foliage, it's been quite a change to return to my local Philadelphia haunts and find that the few warblers that are here are often extremely high and/or hidden by extensive foliage. Each day out reminds me of the saying about a day without wine being like a day without sunshine. Or perhaps a day without jazz is like a day without sunshine as a public radio station in Kentucky used to say. I feel like I'm going through warbler withdrawal.

But there have been some warblers and also other first of season or first of year birds for Philadelphia. It's been a treat to see familiar thrushes, flycatchers and orioles again. Many of them will remain here and nest. The field sketch immediately above shows some of the local birds, a not quite local Chestnut-sided Warbler seen from more or less straight underneath, a House Finch at feeder, a mystery flycatcher that turned out to be an Acadian, and a Baltimore Oriole.

Each year I promise myself to be a bit more discriminating in the art I show on this blog and elsewhere. My intent it so show more finished work and less working sketches, often of not the best quality. But guess what? It's easier said than done, this producing finished quality work idea.

I've struggled for the last week with small watercolor sketches in my Stillman and Birn 5.5x8.5 Gamma sketchbook. These are all based on photos from Magee, the things I took after I'd done some field sketches. The sketchbooks themselves are fine.

But most of the sketches leave something if not a lot to be desired, especially when you consider the beauty of the birds when seen live.  And of course there is size. I had one Black-throated Green land within a hand's reach of me. At that close range you see how delicate and really tiny they are. All the more reason to pursue my ongoing goal of doing them justice in paint. I've seen thousands of illustrations of warblers. I've seen exceedingly few successful paintings of them.

I recently read a post elsewhere about watercolor not actually being hard. But it is. It is exceedingly hard. It's only easy if you really don't understand how great watercolor can be, for instance in the work of Winslow Homer or John Singer Sargent, both of whose work is full of light and life. If you only use watercolor to fill in areas with color that is something else again. It still requires skill I think. But it completely ignores the sense of transparency and light which in my humble opinion is the only reason to even use watercolor.

Changing of the Bird Guard

I've been wondering what changes I might find along the Wissahickon when I finally found the time to visit. It's my closest birding patch. But I know that at this time of year I might find more interesting birds at other nearby places like Morris Arboretum. Once migrating warblers arrive on their way south Carpenter's Woods, another nearby site, might be better.

But I miss knowing what's going on at the Wissahickon. When I got there at 8 a.m. this morning one voice was noticeably lacking, the Acadian Flycatcher. It's the most ubiquitous bird during summer, with the possible exception  of the Gray Catbird. Normally I see and hear seven or eight. Today I heard just one.

They seem to have been replaced by Eastern Wood Pewees and Red-eyed Vireos. Both of these birds are here, and somewhat plentiful, during the summer. But they never outnumber the Acadians as they did today. It looks to me like flycatchers may be on the move, especially when I think about the recently seen, and very  unusual here, Olive-sided Flycatcher.

Warblers on the other hand have arrived. I saw at least two Black-and-whites today, the first of the late summer, along with one immature American Redstart, and what I  think was a Worm-eating, though it might have been one more Red-eyed Vireo.

So once again I start a season of trying to sketch warblers. I did do one sketch of a female black and white from memory today, about 60 minutes after seeing it. Horrible! Later I tried a watercolor based on an old photo I'd taken. Horrible!! So finally I illustrated this with a very old charcoal drawing based on the same photo.  At  least it looks like the bird. I know I can draw likenesses from photos. But I  don't want to. I'd like to get where I can do a credible likeness from life. I  recently mentioned the great challengeof getting the complex feather pattern of an immature Green Heron, or that of sun dappled foliage. But another great challenge, and one I'd really like to conquer, is being able to draw warblers live!!

One other thing of note today was the number of birds feeding on Devil's Walkingstick, something considered an invasive by many but not by me. Thrushes, among others love it. Yesterday  we saw a Wood Thrush feeding on it. Today  I saw a number of Veeries, and probably 30 American Robins. Thrushes really  do love it. And at least one of them, the Wood Thrush, is drastically declining in number. One of the states in which it is still doing well is Pennsylvania. Do we really want to get  rid of one of the foods it feeds on?

Even a Black-and-white warbler showed his interest in it today, though he was looking for bugs on its prickly trunk and not eating berries. Hopefully  I'll do a little better annotating my blog on Devils Walkingstick this fall. I would like to continue documenting all the birds that feed on it.

So it seems we've begun a changing of the bird guard. Though summer isn't yet over many  birds have already started migrating south. It's a time to enjoy these beautiful birds one last time before they're gone for a much too lengthy  season.

Sketching Animation

It's easy to be a bit manic as an artist. There are so many interesting parts of art it's hard to know which to focus on. And it's easy to be seduced by one then the other so that you seem to move about erratically with no clear sense of direction.
In some ways it may be similar to a cook who has a mental encyclopedia of all the various enjoyable tastes and combinations of tastes that are available to him. But you can't use them all at once! My guess is that the secret of any successful artistic/creative endeavor is to learn to focus on one thing and sublimate others.
I had to think of this when sketching the House Sparrows that are at a window feeder outside my studio. They were particularly raucous today with at least 15 of them fighting for the space for three that the feeder allows. Some sketches of them are at top.

Seeing sketches that capture a sense of liveliness and animation reminds me of how much I love this in art. At times I can value it over everything else. I've never studied animation or cartoons but this type of sketch veers toward a cartoon. This could sound bad, something lower on the cultural hierarchy than more ambituous, finished art. But I doubt it's true. There probably is a reason that both cartoons and animation are so popular. They strike a fundamental human chord.
Among the other attributes of art I love are an orchestration of order, of color, tone, composition. This is almost the opposite of the spontaneity of field sketches. Soon I'm sure that desire for orchestrated order will come to the forefront again. But for now I'm happy to be trying to capture the sense of animation of the birds I see. Above is a Ruby-throated Hummingbird that has been frequenting our monarda. Below him two versions of a singing Common Yellowthroat. At bottom a House Finch also from the studio feeder.

Outside our kitchen a small and young Downy Woodpecker has been frequenting our various feeders. That is him above along with a Great Blue Heron at the Wissahickon striking a particularly elegant pose. Real-life poses that are caught on paper rank high in my pantheon of desirable artistic qualities. Also a far-off Red-tailed Hawk.

And finally the ubiquitous squawker of the summer, a Gray Catbird. They're so easy to ignore, especially as they mimic the sounds of other birds and can make a birder think the bird is far more unusual than it really is. But they're also very animated birds. I've tried to capture some of that here. To me this is far more exciting than putting down every little feather of the greater coverts and having it look dead as a doornail. With him is a back view of an Acadian Flycatcher. This is another ubiquitous bird of the Wissahickon and one I'd really like to master before the year is out.

Some More Traditional Watercolors

For some people it may seem illogical to think that abstraction in art can only happen after the artist understands realism. Perhaps it's better to say that you can only simplify after you know the complexity of a subject well enough to simplify it, leaving out inessential parts. Until you're really familiar with the subject it's hard to say what's essential and what's not.
Some abstract/modern/non-objective art of course never understands the subject and isn't really interested in doing so. I'm not going to judge whether this is good, bad or neither. But for myself I've found that I do like to understand a subject before I simplify it.
So often I'll use photos as a basis for a painting if I think it will help me learn the birds better. I'm not sure that this works all that well. But I think that there is a mental process of trying to understand the structure of a bird that you see in a photo that can help in understanding. That's particularly true in the second watercolor which I'll show below. But it's also true in the watercolor at top, 9x12 inches on Arches 300# cold press paper.
This is based on the type of scene that I love, a variety of shorebirds. We rarely see the endangered Red Knot but we saw a number at Cape May this year, mainly on Nummy Island near Stone Harbor. He is at right along with a Short-billed Dowitcher, a Dunlin, and two Black-bellied Plovers in a variety of plumages. I hope that as I paint more shorebirds I'll get comfortable enough with them so that I feel free to simplify and abstract when the notion takes me.

I think that the breeding bird I see most often in summer, if I discount our yardbirds of House Finch, House Sparrow and Robin, as well as the ubiquitous Gray Catbird, is the Acadian Flycatcher. It's not really a common bird, but it is common in some areas that I bird, particularly Wissahickon Creek.
I've done many, many field sketches of it. Today I saw 4-5 and did more field sketches. And yet I feel that I still don't have it down. What is the shape of the head? What is the angle of the bill when seen from below as is so often the case? In an attempt to understand the structure a bit better I did the small 5x7 inch watercolor above. It looks very familiar and I think that's because it's one of the best Acadian Flycatcher photos I've taken so I've used it often. In any case that is the goal of the watercolor above. The new photos I took today of a bird perched just 6 feet away will also be used more than once I'd guess. But soon I think I'll be able to get an accurate field sketch and will no longer need photos.
I think some birders would get bored with the Wissahickon in spring and summer. Just the same old birds. That may be. But until I've mastered sketching them they're always a great opportunity in my eyes. There is always something new to see.

Tourists Have Finally Left

Anyone who has lived in a tourist town or a touristy section of town, as I once did in San Francisco, knows the odd feeling of your neighborhood not really belonging to you. There are all these strangers there, acting like it is THEIR neighborhood.

I had to think of that today while briefly birding and sketching at Carpenter's Woods. Most of the migrants have been gone for a month or so, breeding somewhere farther north. And at least at Carpenter's Woods, the tourist birders are gone as well. They can be numerous in late spring but are almost nonexistent now.

Whether that makes the breeding birds more normal I don't know. But it seems to. That is the feeling I have as I walk through the local places that I bird.

For instance the Acadian Flycatcher, shown in a new watercolor sketch above, sometimes seems like the most numerous bird at the Wissahickon. They're still hard to see as they tend to be at least 15 feet up, fairly well hidden in dense foliage. But I generally get a glimpse of one or two on each walk.

That's one at top left in the field sketches above. It's not really all that successful and doesn't look much different than the many other sketches I've done of it this summer. So while this recent viewing was fresh in my mind I decided to do a watercolor sketch from some older photos I'd taken. My thought was that doing something more developed might coalesce all the tidbits of knowledge I had picked up in all my recent sightings. Hopefully it will. The only other solution I can think of is to just camp out in their vicinity and keep sketching each time they make their 15 second appearance until I have them down.

The tourist season analogy hit me today as a Carolina Wren seemed to scold me for a 5-10 minutes. It took me awhile to realize he was right in front of me, only six feet away, rather than 12-15. The sketch above tries to capture the way he stood with legs splayed, stretched tall as could be, head almost straight in the air, calling out loudly. What was oddest though was how he would switch from facing right to facing left as he did this. Each time he made this quick movement he struck a new dramatic pose. Like the Acadian I'm not happy with the sketch. I also took a couple photos. I might trying to use this sketch and the photos to try to capture this striking event in watercolor.

Regardless of the sketch though the actual experience got me to thinking that I was now in the real world of birds. Perhaps he was warning off a mate on eggs, or with young. In either case it seemed like I'd intruded in the daily life of my local birds.

That's not quite as exciting as glimpsing the brilliant neo-tropical migrants on their short trips through. But it is very satisfying and not at all to be missed. There's nothing like knowing the natural order of the place in which you live.

Oh yes. A field sketch of some low-hanging White Oak leaves. I'm determined to spend more time on this. No more leaf torture remember?

Freedom to Make Mistakes

A funny thing happened as I worked on this drawing, now in its third or fourth day I think. I realized that I was spending a lot of time trying to retrieve what I'd lost from the last version of this drawing that I posted.

I won't rattle on forever about that but it does seem appropriate for this my 100th post. When I started this blog, originally a web site, I thought I'd use it to write down bird sightings, thoughts on birds, nature and art, and maybe throw in a quick sketch or two. But as time went on I realized that my strongest interest by far was in developing my art and showing it here.

When I started this drawing I wanted to be somewhat improvisatory, as I've been through most of my artistic career. I had foregone improvisation to a large extent over the last three years as I took up birds as my subject. But something gnawed at me as I did so. I wanted to be true to the birds I saw but I wanted more artistic freedom.

I think I've finally gotten to the stage where I'm regaining that freedom. And one of the big parts of that freedom is the Freedom to Make Mistakes!

I think that may be what happened when I went back into this drawing to try to unify the background, so that it seemed more illusionistic and not so much just painterly markings with pastel. In doing that I think I lost some of the summery brightness that the drawing had on Sunday.

I hope that I've retrieved some of that. If not I think I have at least turned it into a finished drawing. And that is really what is important to me.

When I did abstract and non-objective work most drawings took days to finish. If they didn't then they at least took a full eight hour day. I was never satisified with what I did, at least not immediately. But generally after those days of work I was satisfied. I felt that I had a finished drawing. Paintings were the same but took weeks rather than days.

Most of my bird art has been done in much less time. Anyone who follows this blog knows that occasionally I still spend too long because I have ruined a good quick watercolor or two by overwork. That's undoubtedly true. But I think watercolor is a different type of medium. Most artists need to work quickly when using it. It just won't get better with continued work.

Pastels, charcoals and paintings are different however. It is possible to make them better with more work. It doesn't always work out, but even when it doesn't you generally learn something.

So that is really why this works seems appropriate for my 100th post. Whether it's better or worse than my drawing from Sunday I can't say right now. I'm too close to it. What's most important though is that I worked on it until I thought it was finished, really finished, like my old abstract works. Sometimes this is a painful process. But I think in the end it makes for better stronger work. And for happier artists!

Finished(?) Acadian Flycatcher in Pastel

This improvisatory drawing of an Acadian Flycatcher may be finished. It is certainly finished for an hour or two. My tendency as an artist is to just launch into activity and see what happens. I like working that way and probably can't work any other way. But sometimes it gets me into trouble! A little more thought and patience might be useful.

So over the ywars I've learned that even though I may work in a fevered flurry it's best to take a break before I destroy something good because I'm working too quickly. So for now this sits.

It's not quite as bright as yesterday's drawing but I think it looks a bit more realistic. Anyway I'm sure I'll have a better opinion on it after letting it sit for a bit.

Improvisation in Greens

Today just didn't work out for any fieldsketching so I decided to grab an hour or two of studio work. It seemed like a good time to return to pastel and charcoal work, with the subject as usual based on a photo I'd taken.

I'd been happy with my recent Piping Plovers in charcoal and pastels so that's one reason I chose this medium. I also had been happy with the recent watercolor of the Acadian Flycatcher surrounded by leaves and catkins, probably birch, and basking in a golden/green glow. There is something about that glow I love. So I decided to do a drawing based on another photo of the flycatcher.

But as I started I realized that there was something else. I wanted to improvise, as I used to in my abstract and non-objective drawings and paintings. So that's what I did. There is a basic drawing here and a wee bit of planning. But most of this is an improvisation. Who knows how it will turn out?



The drawing at the top is the first version, mainly in compressed charcoal with some pastel. The version above adds much more pastel and a fair amount of erasure. As with so much of my work I need to take care that I don't lose too much of the brilliant white of the paper. It will be another tightrope walk. So will the rest of the work. I really don't know where I'm going with this. But that is the thrill of improvisation. Sometimes it works; and sometimes it doesn't.

When I was a graduate student in art at Cornell I loved jazz and really thought of much of my work as being similar to improvisatory jazz. There may be a foundational melody or other structure to come back to but the fun is in experimenting away from that structure. In this case it's the Acadian Flycatcher and foliage. I hope that I won't lose the structure in my improvisation. As with all my bird art I still want to stay true to the subject.

Acadian Flycatcher In Leaves Continued

I've done some more work on the Acadian Flycatcher this morning. This time the newest version is at top with the older versions beneath it. As usual I'm wary of overworking it and losing all of that brightness and luminosity that watercolor is capable of. The danger of this of course is that I leave a half-finished work, thinking that it is done. That is the same old story of watercolor. I'm sure over time that expert watercolorists know when to call it quits and when to try to improve it just a bit more. For today though, this is it. Time to let it marinade!

Keeping My Hand in the Game

This will be a quick post before heading off to work. I've been getting in the habit of doing some art work most mornings and I'd like to continue. However I rarely have time to drive somewhere and work from life so most of my work is based on photos that I've taken.

I use a Strathmore Field Sketchbook for many of my watercolors. It includes interleaved lightweight sheets of drawing paper and heavier watercolor paper. I use the first to map out the composition as above.



Then I use the second to do the actual watercolor. Hopefully the sketch on the watercolor paper includes something that I've learned from the first sketch. In this case this is my second version of a painting from this photo or one similar. The first was an abysmal failure. One problem is foreshortening. I'm looking up at the flycatcher. The second, and this is a problem with photos, is that the tail doesn't seem centered under the torso. It's off to the left. If I were drawing from life I'd know whether this was correct or not. But here I'm left with the evidence from the photo. I know that it's highly unlikely that the tail really was off center. But it could have appeared off center. Most likely it did, though I don't know how. In any case this first version of the new watercolor remains fairly true to the photo.

A bigger problem will probably be the background. I've roughly sketched in what I'd like to do in the first sketch. Only time will tell if I'm able to accomplish it in the actual watercolor.

Acadian Flycatcher Continued

Because we've been on vacation a lot recently we've missed seeing much of the spring migration locally. With that in mind we headed to Carpenter's Woods in Philadelphia this morning.

But it was extremely quiet. About the only surprise, outside of the missing migrating warblers, was one Baltimore Oriole that landed about 6 feet from us very low to the ground. But we also seemed to sit ourselves down on a bench that must have been very near to an Acadian Flycatcher nest. We had one or more Acadian Flycatchers flying around very close to us. That gave me a chance to take another look and notice how much browner the wings of this bird are compared to his back, which is much more olive.

When we returned home I went back to work on the watercolor above and added some olive wash. You can also see that I fiddled quite a bit with the background. In a sketch like this you have the choice to either render the background in detail or to improvise the 'impression' of a background. Since the bird is the foremost concern I, and many other bird artists, often use 'impressionistic' backgrounds. Sometimes they work; sometimes they do not. When they do not it's too late to change course and go back to a detailed background. I'm not completely happy with the background here. But I do think that any more 'fiddling' will just lead to a dead painting.

So unless this watercolor develops an itch that must be scratched it is done.

Waltzing Around Watercolor

I seem to go back and forth with watercolor between,one, being somewhat more expressive and less limited by what I actually see and, two, trying to be more accurate. As in all art the desire for accuracy can also lead to overcaution, tentativeness, etc. Today's watercolor of an Acadian Flycatcher that I saw and photographed in Shenandoah National Park a couple of weeks ago tends towards more accuracy and maybe more tentativeness.



That was not the problem a year ago when I photographed another Acadian Flycatcher in almost the exact same spot. He was so far away that the photo just showed the slightest hint of shape and posture. So with that photo I concentrated more on the overall composition of the pastel drawing. The Flycatcher was a very small part of the drawing though it still was the focus. (Someone might legitimately ask: well if it was in the same place why did you get such a better, more detailed photo this year? The answer is a new camera: Lumix Panasonic FZ28. It has an 18x optical zoom compared to 10x of my last Lumix. I'm not a camera person and don't have the time, money or inclination to carry a lot of camera gear. But these Lumix cameras with fairly high optical zooms with Leica lenses fit my purposes well. And..... are in my limited price range).

I'm not sure what stage I'm at with this new watercolor. I thought I might be done but after photographing it the watercolor does not seem finished. I did try to stay true to the beautifully gradated colors of the Flycatcher, though they are really a bit more olive than this shows at the moment. I'm afraid any more work on it may ruin it through overwork, which may have been a problem in the last couple of watercolors I did.

So as I'm say I'm 'waltzing around watercolor', waiting to see what I should do next. I'll probably know tomorrow or the next day after having let this sit for a bit.



The drawing above is a preliminary sketch for this watercolor. It's nothing special but I thought some readers might find it informative. In it I'm just trying to get a general sense of where I want the bird placed in the watercolor. It ended up being pretty close to this though I did move it up just a bit.

Acadian Flycatcher in Pastel - Surprise Shapes

I think that this drawing is done. I've let it sit for a week while I looked at it. I made some minor changes, the main one being the addition of darker gray/browns to the upper part of the drawing so that it wouldn't be misread as sky.

As I've looked at it I realized that it isn't as much about color as I'd thought. Like most of my work, abstract or realistic, shape is very important. I'm not sure why I didn't realize that about this drawing. Now that it's done I see how much the tree limbs stand out. Perhaps because they are fairly realistic, and not based too much on my imagination, I just didn't think about them playing an important part in the 'art' of the drawing that I mentioned in an earlier post. But they do.

MY Artistic Convention(s)

As I've looked at my other work over the last week I realize that most of it involves a love of drawing, especially drawing in the sense of carving an object out of the flat dimension of paper or canvas. Sometimes those shapes are realistic, and strive to capture the contours of what I see. At other times they are abstract and more concerned with carving a new object from nothing. In both cases they generally show some of the process involved.

Showing the process involved in a work of art is a 20th century art convention. In the eyes of some most conventions eventually seem to be cliches. The most noticeable example of this I think is the gratuitous painterly drip. Nonetheless it is MY convention. I don't feel right hiding all aspects of the act of illusion creation that is the basis of most representational art. So if someone might wonder why I might not do smoother, more finished drawings, especially as I create the shapes, this is why. I just don't like too much smoothness and the hiding of the process of creating the illusion. For me there is some work involved in getting shapes right. I like to let some of that work show. I realize this is a convention. It does not in itself create better art. But it's my convention.

Acadian Flycatcher in Pastel - No Details

I enjoyed switching from watercolor to pastel in my last drawing and decided to try it again today. Much more than watercolor it is an additive process, i.e. I can start out without a clear plan of what I'm going to do, knowing that I can improvise as I go along. I don't need to worry as much about using up something, e.g. the white of the paper, and then needing to get it back later. Though it's possible to use the clear white of the paper thoughtlessly, just as in watercolor, it is easier to get it back to some degree through the use of white pastel. Since pastel is itself opaque, the addition of another layer of opaque white is not as noticeable as it is in watercolor. Or better, it doesn't seem as bothersome.

This drawing is based on photos of an Acadian Flycatcher taken in Shenandoah National Park in May, 2008. The bird is even more distant than were the Wood Ducks in my last drawing and posting. Because of that I knew that any work based on it was going to have to devote a lot of space to the surrounding forest, with very little devoted to the flycatcher itself.

I didn't do much in the way of a preliminary drawing. If I had done so it would have focused on the tree limbs and foliage and not on the flycatcher, since he is so small. At the same time I had to do something with him so that he was the focus of the painting. This might have been somewhat easier in watercolor and pen/pencil since I could use the line of the pen or pencil to add some small detail. But detail with the broad edge of a pastel is not so easy. Basically pastel doesn't allow detail.

So my idea here was to start laying in color, knowing that there would probably be numerous changes as I tried to unify the drawing coloristically, remain true to some extent to the sense of the deep forest that is often the home of the Acadian Flycatcher, and make sure that he still stood out from the surrounding jungle of limbs and leaves.

The drawing so far has some sense of the deep forest, but the Flycatcher is a bit lost. And the upper part of the drawing reads like it might be sky when in fact it is just a deeper part of the forest. I may need to change the colors to remedy that. Still I think I've kept some of the sense of the way in which he sat and tilted his head. The colors may also have gotten a bit too monotonous, though that in fact is what they actually were. It's time to leave it be for now and come back another day.