Wobbling Along

Canada Warbler Watercolor.  Copyright 2009 by Ken Januski.

Black-throated Blue Warblers at SCEE Watercolor. Copyright 2025 by Ken Januski

Nashville Warbler on Bean Trellis Mokuhanga, Copyright 2022 by Ken Januski.

Yellow-rumped Warbler Sumi Brushpen Field Sketch. Copyright 2025 by Ken Januski



I hope it will be somewhat obvious that the theme of this post is warblers, affectionately know at least occasionally as wobblers. Like many birders it was the wood warblers of North American that got me truly hooked on birding. Of course most should really be called the wood warblers of the Americas, not just North America. As an artist, especially one whose history was that of large, bold abstract paintings that is how I approached warblers: bold and colorful! 

There were a few minor problems with this, ones I've noted previously. The first was that I didn't know enough about the structure of birds to portray them accurately, especially if I limited myself as I did to my own poor photos and my visual memory. As a consequence many of my first attempts were colorful and bold but also skirted around bird structure as much as I could. The Canada Warbler above from 2009 is an example of this. A better example would be the watercolor I did of a Blackburnian Warbler seen and photographed at Shenandoah National Park that I used as the main image for my blog in its earlier years. I looked forever today and could not find it. And then the thought entered my head that I might actually have sold it. I think that is possibly true though it is a bit hard to believe just because it lacked so much accuracy thought not boldness!

Another problem I discovered early on was that I really didn't like the idea of a flattened space, almost design-like portrait of warblers, or really any bird. It sacrificed the bird for what by then to me had become an artistic cliche -- flattened space. That created another problem, what in the world was I supposed to put around the bird to fill up the space? Surely not all the details of surrounding vegetation!!

To make a long story short the recent opportunity via an on-spec commission of two Black-throated Blue Warblers for a wedding present allowed me to see attempt warblers once again but in a more finished work. That work is also above and was finished about a month ago. Also above a brand new field sketch from yesterday of one of a number of Yellow-rumped Warblers that were skittering all around and through some junipers yesterday, trying to escape the wind and also me. Finally a mokuhanga from about 3 years ago which is actually a new version of my very first mokuhanga which in turn was based on a watercolor I made of a briefly overwintering Nashville Warbler in our yard about 10 years ago. It is just one more example of the various ways in which I've tried to portray warblers over the years.


One of the reasons I accepted the commission was that I felt I'd learned a lot about the structure of both birds and warblers over the years and so wanted to see if that knowledge would appear in practice. Yes, to a certain extent. But the watercolor seems a bit overworked in ways, and has lost the sense of freshness that I most value in watercolors. But I also think it is the best finished watercolor I've ever done of warblers and is somewhat true to them. And I have to say the warbler that first set me off on warblers was a male Black-throated Blue warbler that appeared outside our cabin window around Montfair, VA about 20 years ago. So they are always special to me.

Over many years of both looking at warblers and portraying them I've also become much more interested in showing their movement than in showing the color and pattern of their plumage. That is something that I used in the Black-throated Blue Warbler watercolor but it is greatly subdued. All in all I think it will be much less subdued in most of my future work with warblers. Part of the reason is that they are living creatures, not fashion plates.

Common Yellowthroat Sumi Brushpen and Watercolor Sketch. Copyright 2025 by Ken Januski.

Black and White Warbler Sumi Brushpen Field Sketch. Copyright 2025 by Ken Januski

Tennessee Warblers Sketches. Copyright 2025 by Ken Januski.

Tennessee Warblers Sketches. Copyright 2025 by Ken Januski.

Tennesse Warbler Sumi Brushpen and Watercolor Sketch. Copyright 2025 by Ken Januski

Yellow Warbler at URRP Sumi Brushpen and Watercolor Sketch. Copyright 2025 by Ken Januski.

The images above are all from 2025 and are representative of my desire to capture a sense of movement in warblers and also to have a sense of liveliness. Overtime that sense of liveliness has come to dominate all other artistic desires, though with prints there is always the desire for an equally lively composition. Comparing these to the more finished Black-throated Blues at the top these come out on top. They are far more interesting to me, and far truer I think to the experience of seeing warblers. I do hope to return to warblers in mokuhanga hopefully combining something of these with the sense of a finished composition. They may be incompatible but we will just have to see what happens.

In any case I feel more and more confident about using warblers as subjects and will be making the most of the few that I can still see and perhaps sketch from life in the last weeks of possible warblers, at least where I live!

Finishing Damselflies, Returning to Warblers

I've finally finished the Stream Bluets acrylic painting, having let it sit for between 4 and 8 weeks. For me one of my great artistic fears is overworking a painting to the point that it seems lifeless. Sometimes it  can take years to sense the lifelessness, possibly because after all the work of the overworking I, and probably many others, hate to admit that it didn't work. So when I started up acrylic painting again early this spring I often left paintings temporarily finished in very early states. I didn't want to overwork them.

Finally I decided that I was willing to take the chance of overworking on this painting. It's always hard to say when a work of art is done, particularly ones done in such fluid media as oil or acrylic. It's just so easy to make a few more changes. Of course it's never quite that simple. One change leads to another, etc., etc. But in this  case I think I've frozen the fluidity at the best place.

To me it still looks like a painting, one concerned with shape, color, composition, etc. But it also looks like a plausible representation of a real event, damselflies in a frenzy over a stream, with many of them mating and  ovipositing. To me it is more realistic than many illustrations  that show much more detail. It's a very old debate between painting and illustration. But for me I think it's fairly simple. Illustration always values some sort of representational  detail over something both truer to experience and more satisfying artistically, not that there isn't artistically satisfying illustration. I'm going to leave it at that since I've written about this before. The last thing I'd say is that when most people actually see such a scene in front of them I think that they experience it more the way my painting portrays it than the way most illustrations do.

Stream Bluets at Papermill Run. Acrylic Painting. Copyright 2020 Ken Januski

Due to Covid and lockdowns we missed much of spring migration. But now that fall migration has begin and now that I've figured out where I can bird with a fair amount of safety and few crowds I've been doing a fair amount of birding. Fortunately that has resulted in my seeing many migrants including the colorful warblers, even if some of them are not as colorful as in spring.

As usual it is often quite hard to even SEE them long enough and well enough to identify them, let alone photograph them and in particular sketch  them. I think that probably the only way to successfully sketch migrating warblers from life is to find an area where you think that they might remain for more than a few minutes and then concentrate on just one or  two species. If you continually are trying to identify each little flurry of movement you see you'll never get any sketching done.

But for me, especially having missed most of spring migration, it's hard to make that sacrifice. And so I've tried to both identify and photograph them but not sketch them. BUT I don't at all like trying to make art from the photographs I've made of them. I've written about  this for years and so I hope  I won't  rehash too much of what I've already written.

But I think it is similar to what I just wrote about illustration and damselflies. There is a real danger  of  too much  information. When you know a great deal about insects, birds or whatever you may feel a great need to show all of this knowledge in each piece of  art that you make. Perhaps you feel that someone might say, oh he doesn't understand that bird because  he left out the dark at the base of the primaries. Many years ago there was an article on the front page of the Wall Street Journal about such art and its audience. Unfortunately it was in praise of it!!!

Art is a lively, fluid medium that I don't believe should be beholden to reality, not that anyone agrees on just what reality is. But art is one thing, science is  another, knowledge is another, etc., etc. To me it is a bit like the male athletes I used to see at the outdoor swimming pool when I was a student at Berkeley. Smaller females would fly by the young male athletes in the swimming lanes, seemingly without effort. The males were all effort, all that strength, but strength directed in the wrong direction, down rather than forward. It was a sight to  see. But it's also I think an example of  being not using your abilities in the best manner. The males had strength but they used it wrongly. They would have been better off, at least in the pool, forgetting all about it, or at least directing it forward. The  same thing happens I think with knowledge in art. It can weigh you down just as much as the strength of  those male floppers, I  mean swimmers.

So with all that in mind I wanted to somehow use the warblers I've seen recently as the subject of prints and/or paintings. But  I just didn't want to deal with the excess information of a photo. That's when I decided that if I just looked through the small viewfinder  of my camera at the photos I took the view would be small enough that I'd have to ignore details and just stick to the basics. So  that's what the next four photos are. After I'd sketched them in pencil I added a small bit  of watercolor. I particularly chose photos that had the birds in what to me were fairly active positions, i.e. not just sitting there as though posing.

Pencil and watercolor sketch of Blackburnian Warbler. Copyright 2020 Ken Januski

Pencil and watercolor sketch of Black-throated Green Warbler. Copyright 2020 Ken Januski

Pencil and watercolor sketch of Tennessee Warbler. Copyright 2020 Ken Januski

 

Pencil and watercolor sketch of Chestnut-sided Warbler. Copyright 2020 Ken Januski

After I'd done those sketches I started making compositional studies where I combined one, two or more of the warblers. At one point I decided I needed a larger warbler in the foreground. For some reason I decided to add a Canada Warbler. But since I haven't seen one recently I used a photo that is more than 10 years old, and one that also served as an early unsuccessful watercolor. After I'd done a few pencil and collage studies I added watercolor  to one.

Pencil compositional study for warblers. Copyright 2020  Ken Januski

Pencil and watercolor compositional study for warblers. Copyright 2020  Ken Januski

I will probably use the color study as the basis of a painting or print. But in the meantime I've continued to bird and so see birds. Yesterday I saw both male and female Black-throated Blue Warblers. After I'd been home for awhile I decided that I'd like to do a small study of the female. This is something I used to do with much more frequency. It's both a celebration of the bird and an educational exercise, trying to get me to look closer and imprint on my memory some of the details of the bird. I'm not sure if the educational goal ever gets achieved. I'm sure I forget much of what I think I'm learning as I make the sketch. Still there is always something rewarding in doing them, assuming that I can stand to look at them once I've done(i.e., they don't always work  out).

Ballpoint pen and watercolor study of  female Black-throated Blue Warbler. Copyright 2020 Ken Januski

(Well the new Blogger continues to create more expletives than blogs. But at this point I can't worry about it and I'm sure my readers don't care either. But I have to say it reminds me of Facebook and its recent changes, made by people who seem to have never used the product.)

Early Fall Field Sketches

When you see as many birds as I do, mainly because I'm lucky enough to be able to get outside often, you might ask how I choose what to sketch? One of the first questions I think I ask myself is how long I think the bird might stay in its current position? Is it even worth trying to sketch or will it likely be gone before I even open my sketchbook and get my pen ready, just as a wood warbler might? This is always a combination of gut feeling, sense of adventurousness or caution at that very moment, desire to portray an unusual bird, etc.

In the page of sketches above, which actually took a full two weeks to do there were a number of motivations. With the male Black-throated Blue Warbler and the Solitary Vireo on left page it was just the desire to get these birds down on paper. Even while I was sketching the Black-throated Blue I couldn' t remember what part of the face was black and what blue on the bird I'd seen less than 30 seconds previously. There is so much to try to take in and remember when you know the bird may  be gone in a split second. Similar questions arose for the vireo.

Woodpeckers I've found have different bills from one species to the next. One lower mandible may go out from the head in a more horizontal direction and less of an angle than that of another species. So  I'll often try  to sketch a familiar bird just so  I get a better idea of just  how the bill is situated. That's the case with the Hairy Woodpecker on left and Northern Flicker on right here It's all just a learning process, storing up knowledge, made through both success and failure, so that when I do something more developed I'll have the confidence that I'm being true to the bird.

I can't stand overly detailed work, like that which attempts to get every single feather in  the right place. But I also don't want to have the general sense of the bird wrong. For me, unlike for the buyers of much wildlife art, accuracy is not paramount. But it is a bonus. Artistic qualities always come first.

This has always been an odd part of 'wildlife art.' Is is art or science? For me it is always art, but I'd prefer to also know the science  involved.

I never seem to get Belted Kingfishers right. I'm always a bit disappointed. And  sometimes I'm completely thrown by the bill. Is it thick or thin, short or long? It seems to change by individual bird and my viewpoint. In this case the bill seemed particularly long and thick. So that's how I've portrayed it, even though I have many other sketches, and photos, where it s eemed thinner and shorter. I suppose that's one of the exciting parts of field sketching: things are never quite as simple and pat as you might expect.

Last bird here is a House Sparrrow at lower right and a Broad-winged Hawk at lower left. Such a hawk doesn't have a tail that is dark just on the  sides. It has bands of light and dark. And yet that's what I saw so I put it down. I've done this with other birds where what I saw made no sense and didn't match my knowledge of the bird. Since it's an unsual situation though to me it makes sense to just put down what I saw. After the fact I can double check with guidebooks to see if I can make sense of what caused me to see what I thought I did. At times like this I guess I'm showing more of my scientific side than my artistic.

People often think that science and art are opposed. But my guess is that many knowledgeable artists and scientists know that the opposite is the case.

More Flycatchers

A little over a month ago I saw an Olive-sided Flycatcher at Morris Arboretum. Though I'm well aware of what they look like I took a photo of it because of the color of the underside of its tail, not because I recognized it as an Olive-sided. I didn't I think because it wasn't in the right context. I just don't expect to find them here, even though I've been reading about them migrating through Pennsylvania for the last month.

Yesterday Jerene and I decided to take  advantage of the beautiful weather and visit Morris in the afternoon. Almost as soon as we arrived a large flycatcher landed near us in a large dead tree, a popular spot for many birds at Morris. Sure enough it was another Olive-sided. Above is a quick watercolor done this morning from one of the photos I  took as well as two field sketches done from life. In the second you  can see I've portrayed the white tuft that occasionally is visible behind the tertials on this bird. It's also visible in one of  the photos below.

Because this seems to be an unusual bird in Philadelphia I've included the two photos above for ebird reviewers or anyone else who wants more 'proof' than my own say so. In a way I hate to encourage the reliance on photos since they're so often unreliable. But when they're clearcut I guess that they do no harm. Still I do try to avoid them. There are a few trillion blogs with photos. I think some people hunger for something different.

In the page of field sketches above are a female Black-throated Blue warbler, a Chestnut-sided Warbler, an Eastern Phoebe, tiny Northern Parula seem from beneath and another flycatcher that sketching helped me to ID as an Eastern Pewee. I'm still struck by how much sketching is a from of learning, not so much about the skill of drawing as it is about seeing better. It's long been a British tradition with birders. It's too bad it's not so here.

Closer to Home

I still have more field sketches from our Cape May trip to post but given all I've seen at home since getting back I wanted to post some field sketches from here. The biggest surprise was a mature Red-headed Woodpecker seen today along the Wissahickon in Philadelphia. This is a bird that's not uncommon in Pennsylvania but is in Philadelphia. I was shocked to find an immature along the Wissahickon last fall and was even more shocked when he stayed until mid-March of 2012, maturing into his ruby red head and other striking black and white feathers.
They did breed here in the 19th century, in fact right along the Wissahickon, but I doubt they've been seen more than once a year in Philadelphia over at least the last 25 years. At least that is the impression that I have after talking to a number of expert birders here. So wouldn't it be thrilling to learn that this one stayed and might even be breeding? Who knows. I haven't seen him in 2 months. Today I found him while chasing a warbler song about 200 yards from where he overwintered. That sure seems like strong evidence for it being the same bird even though he seem to have disappeared for two months. Obviously I'll be keeping a close lookout for him now.
He is in bottom right of sketch above, picking insects off Sycamore leaves. Also above a male Baltimore Oriole, first of year female Rose-breasted Grosbeak and Red-eyed Vireo on left. On right a confusing waterthrush that seemed to be singing a Northern Waterthrush song but which I finally determined to be a Louisiana, an Eastern Phoebe and finally the feeding Red-headed Woodpecker.

A couple of days ago we had a great look at a male Scarlet Tanager very close to us, not singing but calling his very loud chick-burr call. We also saw our first Acadian Flycatcher in Philadelphia for 2012. Those sketches are above.

Finally some sketches from Carpenter's Woods. A Black-throated Blue Warbler at top, followed by a very alert Wood Thrush whose neck was quite stretched out, and finally a first of year Canada Warbler.
Unlike the Cape May sketches none of these were done with the aid of a spotting scope. It is so much easier when you have both hands free to draw and go back to the scope to check details. But most passerines don't sit still long enough for a scope to be of much use. This is particularly true of warblers. So all of these sketches were based on looking at birds in binoculars for a few seconds then trying to remember what I saw and put it down.
By the way Blogger seems to have done something recently to eliminate paragraphs and/or line breaks. So text has become jumbled together and very hard to read. I can only hope they fix it soon.

Some Ink Sketches

Continuing on with the thought of preparing myself for doing field sketches of wood warblers when they arrive for their brief spring visit I've returned to my photos of them and done some ballpoint pen studies. Above are some Black-throated Greens. Though the most striking thing about these warblers is their color you really can't do justice to that without being able to draw the structure of the bird. Many of these photos were taken at Magee Marsh in Ohio last year where warblers seemed to drip from the trees.

Above are Black-throated Blues. Though we saw many of them at Magee we also see very many here in Philadelphia, especially in the fall. These sketches are all based on photos I took in Philadelphia over the last couple of years.

The striking colors or warblers can almost hypnotize you. I always find that when I try to draw them in the field the thing that has stuck in my mind is a field mark, for example the black throat of either Black-throated warbler. But I don't remember the structure. In fact I don't even SEE it. I'm too struck by the colors and patterns, and of course the fact that the bird has now flown. In any case I hope that these studies might help a small bit in creating a mental imprint on my mind of their structure.

I do have a better mental image of a Belted Kingfisher. So when I drew one recently in the field with a very long thin bill I knew it was wrong. But that is what I saw so I stayed true to it. But it got me thinking so I did some ballpoint pen studies of them as well, all based on photos I've taken in Philadelphia over the last year or two. I've yet to figure out what made the bill seem so thin. But in looking at my old field sketches I found another similar sketch with a long thin bill. Perhaps it's because his mouth was open, perhaps eating something? I don't know. but something created the illusion of thinness. I'll need to keep investigating. (Well the investigation wasn't very time-consuming. After posting this I was looking through 'The Art of Robert Bateman.' I came across a painting, which I'd seen many times before, called 'Aspen and Kingfisher.' It showed a kingfisher flying with its mouth wide open. In that position the lower mandible in particular looks thin and long, quite unlike the blunt appearance of the entire bill. I believe that most likely it was the open bill that so confused me in my field sketch.)

These sketches are all ballpoint pen as I've mentioned. You might think the finality of ink would be inhibiting. But for me it's much better than the ephemerality of pencil. You never know when your fine, carefully drawn fine lines are going to smudge away to a blur. With ink you're sometimes stuck with a line that is wrong. Your mistakes show. But I think it's easier to cover over them and have lines that stay as you made them than to worry about smudging pencil. It is surprising to find ink such a rewarding medium. I used to draw with India ink and liked it for the same reasons. But I've only recently tried ballpoint pen, thanks mainly to two artists I often see at Birdforum, Alan Dalton and Paschalis Dougalis. More than anything else their work convinced me to give it a try. I'm glad I did.

A Passion for Blues

It may sound weird but I probably feel as strongly about a great blue heron as Matisse did about a female torso(I'm only talking about aesthetics of course). If artists supposedly reflect the concern of their times, then today when nature is the greatest concern on a global scale, I suppose nature's images would be logical for a contemporary artist.

Sculptor Kent Ullberg as quoted in American Wildlife Art by David J. Wagner

I finished off this wonderful book by David J. Wagner right in the middle of my latest linocut. What struck me about this quote is that it gets to the heart of the primary subject of this blog: art that is based on nature, not just nature, not just art, not just nature sketches, but ART in capitals, that uses nature as its subject.

I'm using a bit of hyperbole in saying ART in capitals but just a bit. If you think of the best art, whether it's music, literature, painting, sculpture, novels or whatever you know that it has high aspirations. And it must meet at least some of them or it wouldn't be widely recognized.

My background is fine art, where at least in theory the goal is to create art in caps. Of course much doesn't and much is preposterous, bombastic nonsense. But the goal is honest I think. However for the last 100 years or so I don't think that there are many in the fine art world who really even consider art with nature as its subject as being fine art. By definition it is a lower form of art.

Now I know that this is nonsense and it's a very foolish, arrogant attitude. Nonetheless it's there. Wildlife Art Journal often touches on this theme as well. But I've yet to read an argument that I think will hold water in the fine art world.

Until I read the Kent Ullberg quote above. Nature is a overriding concern throughout the world today and it only makes sense that ambitious artists should use it as their theme.

That said I thought in the back of my mind as I concentrated on finishing the linocut that when I was finished I'd write a post such as this and illustrate it with a quick Great Blue Heron watercolor.

But as I looked through my photos I got distracted by my photos of Black-throated Blue warblers from this fall. Perhaps I care as much about them, and the Hercules Club that they feed on, as Kent Ullberg feels about Great Blue Herons.

Sad to say much of the breeding habitat of this beautiful warbler is being threatened by indiscriminate energy exploration and extraction in the Marcellus Shale fields of Pennsylvania.