Painting and Finishing, Painting and Finishing

Blackburnian, Canada and Black-throated GreenWarblers. 9x12 inch  acrylic painting. Copyright 2020 by Ken Januski.

Savannah Sparrow at Dixon Meadow  Preserve. 9x12 inch acrylic painting. Copyright 2020  by Ken Januski.

 

Though I had thought I might  have returned to printmaking by now I obviously have not. I think I know why. September  and October so far  have both been very active with migrating birds. I see them,  am stimulated to  portray them  and/or  the experience of  seeing them  and  I have to choose a medium. Which medium seems to offer the most flexibility? Not printmaking, not watercolor, at least for  me, but acrylic.

Most of my artistic background  is in painting, either acrylic  or oil, where I  can make a major change in a nanosecond. It turns out that this is  the way I feel like working right  now. I want a  direct way to make some sort of portrayal of  what I've seen.

But  I almost never want a portrait. I realized after almost my first or second bird painting that I didn't  like the idea of  bird portraits. Yes, there are many  handsome, beautiful birds, including all of the ones above. But to  portray them to me seems wrong. Too often it makes them seem cute. Nicely posed, painted in understated colors, etc., etc. I occasionally do something like this in a watercolor study, though I wouldn't argue that I do so with any great skill. But they are just  studies. They aren't finished  paintings and for me aren't even studies for  finished  paintings. Why? Because they would just look like portraits, like photos from  the 19th century of  your distant ancestors in photographic studios. Very stiff and unnatural!

I've never know how to portray them in a way that looks more natural, though this is a lack of both imagination  and skill with particular media, e.g. oil, watercolor, printmaking, et al. Acrylic painting allows my imagination to run free. I can keep experimenting and changing until the composition seems right. It's a very direct way to work.

So that is more  or less what the "painting" refers to in the title. I just keep painting trying to find the right way to  make a picture of something,  in this case birds that I've recently seen.

There's also the question of "finishing." I've always, and I do  think always is correct, disliked paintings with high finish, particularly paintings  where you  can't  even see any  brushstrokes. This  has been an ideal for  some painters for many centuries.  And I'm sure I can find some painters, Raphael perhaps, where the high finish doesn't bother me. But often it  just is very irritating. Ingres is somewhere in between. I have to  admire his work but  it does leave me pretty cold. Unfortunately in wildlife art it has been de rigeur for 100s years or more as far as I can tell. And it is wildlife  art that it seems most misplaced. For still life, nature morte,  it might make more sense. Most of  the subjects are no longer alive. Even the fruit has  been plucked. But wildlife IS alive. Why paint wildlife that looks like a still life? As I've written about this  many times  before I won't go  on. I'll just say that it is not a type of  "finish" I want in my  paintings.

My idea of  "finish," is much closer to Matisse's, at least the Matisse who wrote early in his career that in his paintings he wanted everything in its place, where there was nothing extra and everything worked  together. I think that idea has probably been prominent in my work for 40-50 years. I wouldn't argue that  it's the only way to make art. And  I'm sure that for  some viewers it can be just as offputting as the high finish of  more photographically-minded painters is  to  me.

So the other thing I like  about painting is  that also allows me to get to the type of  formal finish much more quickly than any other medium. Both printmaking  and watercolor generally require some planning and exclude much change and modification. It's  just the  nature of those  media. If you have a good  idea what you want to start with then they can be ideal media. And I do  love to the work of  others in  them. I even like some of my own.

But right now I'm more interested in both formal finish, ala Matisse, and wildlife art that seems alive and not a portrait, sometimes a stultified portrait. So  I continue to work in acrylic, painting and finishing.

I'm sure there will come a time when I want to translate some of  that into prints.

I had hoped to write more  about the upcoming Society of Wildlife Artist's 'The Natural  Eye ' show  in London. But I think that should  be another post. For now you can see, and  buy, much  of the work at The Natural Eye 2020.

(I'm starting to hate the new Blogger. My html may indeed be invalid as Blogger tells me but I didn't  create  it, Blogger did. I'm sure that this is of no interest to readers to I'm just going to ignore it. I don't have time to babysit Blogger.)

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.)

Grabbing a Warbler in Your Hand

Northern Parula at Magee Marsh. Charcoal and Pastel Drawing by Ken Januski.

Northern Parula at Magee Marsh. Pencil Drawing by  Ken Januski.

Northern Parula at Magee Marsh. Pencil Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

Northern Parula at Magee Marsh. Photo by Ken Januski.

I recently spent over a week in the Magee Marsh area of Ohio with my wife. It is a great place to see warblers close up. But after a while you begin to suspect that warblers all have the same song: "click, click, click, clickclickclick". The sound of cameras drowns out the sound of the birds. It is that crowded and everyone seems to have a camera.

It's easy to understand. They are such beautiful birds and only rarely can most people see them so close. So you want to capture them. It's a real temptation, and one I always fall to. But there's something bothersome about 'capturing' them via photography. It can seem a bit aggressive as well as possessive, like an object to be obtained rather than something to enjoy. Drawing them from life is far more difficult than pushing the button on a camera. But it's also far more engaging. So I always plan to do sketches of them from life and eventually I do so. Such sketches are difficult because the birds move so quickly.

At that time it almost seems criminal to reach for the sketchbook. On the other hand it's also the only chance you may ever get to sketch them close up from life. I know that there will be problems with the sketches but I can't resist doing so. Many of them are shown here. I'm also including a number of photos, and also I hope a couple of videos. I think together that they give some sense of the full experience.

Above you see three different representations of a Northern Parula along with a photo.  Sometimes the warblers are so close you could literally reach out and grab them. That certainly was the case for me with Pine, Black-throated Green, Chestnut-sided and Yellow Warblers. They were within my grasp. My thinking here is that though you can almost reach out and grab these warblers any art work based on them ought also to have that quality. The charcoal and pastel drawing at the top, done today two weeks after getting back from Magee, attempts just that. It attempts to capture the experience, not just copy a photo.

Blackburnian Warbler at Magee Marsh. Pencil Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

Blackburnian Warbler at Magee Marsh. Brush Pen and Watercolor Painting by  Ken Januski.

Blackburnian Warbler at Magee Marsh. Photo by Ken Januski.

Above are three representations of the striking Blackburnian Warbler. The first is a field sketch done from life. Often I know that I'll get something wrong, perhaps the shape, more likely some part of their complex feather patterns. But trying to capture them live on paper gets me to see and know them better. If I later do a work based on a photo, as in the brush pen and watercolor painting above, it is much easier to take liberties with the photo, to be less intimidated by its 'reality.''

Below are a few more field sketches as well as photos of many of the other warblers seen at Magee Marsh.

Black-throated Blue Warbler at Magee Marsh. Pencil Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

Black-throated Blue Warbler at Magee Marsh. Photo by Ken Januski.

Black-throated Green Warbler at Magee Marsh. Pencil Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

Black-throated Green Warbler at Magee Marsh. Photo by Ken Januski.

Magnolia Warbler at Magee Marsh. Pencil Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

Magnolia Warbler at Magee Marsh. Photo by Ken Januski.

Nashville Warbler at Magee Marsh. Pencil Field Sketch by  Ken Januski.

Nashville Warbler at Magee Marsh. Photo by Ken Januski.

Chestnut-sided Warbler  at Magee Marsh. Photo by Ken Januski.

Though it is always exciting to see all of these warblers, and many other species, at Magee it often happens that as soon as we get home a bird that we'd gone on vacation specifically to see makes an appearance while we're out birding in Philadelphia. Such was the case with the first Prothonotary Warbler we've ever seen in Philadelphia. I found it less than two miles from home, along the Wissahickon Creek.

He actually stayed around long enough for me to shoot a short video with my camera as well as take a number of photos. One of the reasons I like shooting videos, and only with my camera so the gear is simple, is that I can often get the song along with the bird. For me a bird is not a bird without his  song.

One problem I've had with Prothonotary Warblers is that though they are quite striking visually I find it  difficult to make an interesting painting based on them. I think that this is due to the lack of pattern in their plumage. In any case I used this video as a springboard for my most successful version of a Prothonotary so far.

Prothonotary Warbler at Wissahickon. Brush Pen and Watercolor Painting by Ken Januski.

Prothonotary Warbler  at Magee Marsh. Photo by Ken Januski.

Finally I'd like to add something about the title of this post. When a warbler is close enough to grab in your hand you realize what tiny, fragile creatures they are. I like experiencing this. It helps to take them out of the 'cute' category and actually seem like the living things that they are. It also helps you realize how optics don't necessarily tell the truth about the world, neither through binoculars nor in photos. Things seem large, bold and detailed in both. But it often comes as a surprise to  find out just how small those bold, beautiful warblers really are.

Warbler Return

Blackburnian Warbler at Papermill Run. Watercolor Sketch by Ken Januski.

Blackburnian Warblers breed in Pennsylvania, not unfortunately where I live in Phialdelphia, but farther north. So they are not all that uncommon as they migrate through in fall and spring. Still they do tend so stop most people in their tracks if seen closely. The one I saw today along Papermill Run at Morris Arboretum no longer had the fire engine orange/red of the spring in his throat but he was still orange enough to make me take notice.

If they were a bit more common I suppose I might have tried some field sketches today. But this one was 50-60 feet up and I couldn't really see him well even in my binoculars. So I reached for my camera and took about 10 photos hoping that at least a few would be worth keeping. One of the best became the origin of the sketch above in a Stillman and Birn Gamma sketchbook.

With warblers, especially if you use photos, it's the easiest thing in the world to get precious, to try to get every little nuance of color and pattern, letting composition and everything else that makes a picture fall by the wayside. I tried to not lose sight of the other elements of painting here. Hopefully I'll eventually become a master of this, knowing how to paint the most beautiful and striking of warblers without letting them dominate the scene.

The Blackburnian has been the most exciting fall warbler so far. A few days ago I saw two Blue-winged Warblers and that was pretty nice. Chestnut-sided Warblers have given me great looks at their undersides twice during the last week and Black and White Warblers have given us some good looks. The breeding Yellow Warblers, Common Yellowthroats and American Redstarts have also been around. It's great to be seeing them but sad to realize that once they're gone it will be at least another 6 months before they appear again in Philadelphia.

Least Sandpiper. Ballpoint pen studies by Ken Januski.

The watercolor at top and these ballpoint pen sketches from photos I've taken over the last year of Least Sandpipers both show my tendency to try to do studies of birds I've recently seen and sketched. I was recently engaged in an online conversation about what gear to take with you if you want to sketch birds. Video cameras and still cameras topped the list, but not my list. I really don't believe either are of much use until you've tried to sketch birds live. It's only when you do, and fail, that you realize how complex it is.

But more importantly you learn to make decisions, to choose this line over that line, in the brief time the bird is there. You learn ALL that you don't know, but also what questions to ask, what to find out when you look at photos or videos. For instance only if you've sketched shorebirds live do you realize how hard it is to properly place their head and neck when they're bent over feeding. Is the head above or below the back and how much?

I think my ultimate goal in sketching, outside of just liking the finished product, is to be able to know birds so well that if I'm sketching them facing one direction and then they face the other direction  I can effortlessly continue drawing. I'd like to know their structure so well that I can place them convincingly in any pose. And then of course I can abstract that since that's the way I like to portray them.

I think artists who work mainly from photos probably have much less of a chance of getting to understand the structure of birds. It's definitely a skill to be able to render what you see in a photo. Unfortunately it is far more common than you might think and my guess will never lead to a successful career in art. We watched a wonderful show on the Cuban musician Cachao recently. He said more or less the same thing about music as I recall. Rendering skills and technical music skills can only go so far. Then you need to do more.

Weekend Sightings

Gnatcatcher, Blackburnian and Pileated. Sketches by Ken Januski

 

It seems like migration has truly begun. Though we haven't seen hordes of birds over the last few days, especially this weekend, we have seen enough to make it feel as though spring and migration is truly here. As is usual with warblers they don't sit around long for sketching. In fact they don't sit at all!

The only bird drawn from life here is a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher and they're as flitty as any warbler. Still I did make this attempt yesterday. Later in the day we saw a Pileated Woodpecker excavating a hole. Every once in a while he would seem to rock back and forth into and out of the hole. When I put up my binoculars I realized that every few minutes when this rocking occured he was tossing out the wood that he'd just chiseled out.

I didn't begin to try to draw it, though I did take some distant photos. This is done this afternoon strictly from memory.

The biggest thrill of the weekend was a male Blackburnian along the Wissahickon today. Most of the recent warblers, even the Louisiana Warblers, have been very high, either feeding or singing. But this most beautiful of warblers perched at eye level just 10 feet away, but also for just about 10 seconds. Then he was gone for good. So this also is done from memory after I got home.

As I've said I've been experimenting with Stillman and Birn sketchbooks for my demo this Saturday. But my field sketches are generally done in ballpoint pen in a Moleskine sketchbook. That is what I used to draw the gnatcatcher so I decided to also use it for the other birds. After that I decided to experiment with adding color with the Caran d'Ache Neocolor II crayons and a waterbrush.

I much prefer the Stillman and Birn for more developed work in color, especially with the Caran d'Ache crayons but it's nice to know that they can also be used to add a bit of color to the Moleskine field sketches.

There was a tiime I couldn't imagine working from my memory hours later. I'm glad that I finally have enough experience that I'm at least not afraid to give it a try. Perhaps later I'll try something more developed combining the Blackburnian and one of the waterthrushes.

P.S. Given all the birds I'm seeing recently I've found myself going back to Michael Warren's American Birding Sketchbook. I admire it more everytime I look at it, especially for incorporating bird and environment, something quite rare in most bird art.

More Warbler Sketches in Ink

Our trip to the Biggest Week in American Birding at Magee Marsh in Ohio last spring was memorable in many ways. At the top of the list though was the number of migrating wood warblers in full breeding plumage that seemed to be everywhere.

I did stick to my plan and try to do as much field sketching as possible. This is always difficult when you know you probably won't get such good looks at some of these birds again for many years. Wouldn't it be better to just take photos? Well that certainly was a temptation but I'm proud of myself for sticking with my plan and doing numerous field sketches. I also took photos but I concentrated on sketching.

But winter always seems to be the time for me to look through the photos that I have taken and do some drawings based on them. So I'm making use of some of the photos I took at Magee of Cape May Warblers here.

The sketches above are based on those photos. In many of them a Cape May Warbler had just bathed in the stream in front of us and had hopped back up to preen and rearrange his feathers. Most of the photos show him in motion and I've also tried to portray that in some of the sketches. It's all part of what birds actually look like.

If you've ever seen a Cape May Warbler in breeding plumage you might wonder how I can stand to portray it in black and white. I love its color though my wife thinks that they're over the top. I'm sure I'll get to something in color eventually but for now I'm concentrating on structure. I can already see on mistake I've made in that in these drawings.

We also got some very good looks at numerous Blackburnian Warblers. I did do a multi-color reduction linocut based on them as well as a couple of watercolor sketches. But it's always good to study their structure again. These sketches are based on Magee photos as well as some from Shenandoah National Park.

And speaking of Shenandoah National Park above are some sketches of Canada Warblers based on photos I've taken there over the years. Some of my very first bird drawings when I took up birds as subject about six years ago were these same Canadas. That was when I first realized how deceptive photos can be and how hard it is to make sense of an unclear area in a photo if you don't really understand the structure of the subject. Thankfully I've learned a bit more about structure during the last six years. Not that there's not still a long, long way to go.

Ten Terns and SWLA(The Other Acronym)

In any field there are acronyms that often mean a lot to the few people that are interested in that particular subject but often are meaningless or actually sound like pretentious nonsense to others. I used to work in IT and as you can guess there were so many in that field that you could almost construct entire sentences of just acronyms - not that anyone in their right mind would want to.

As I've mentioned on and off over the years of this blog's existence I've struggled to combine my so-called 'fine art' background with wildlife art. I put 'fine art' in quotes because to me there's a false but nonetheless existent dichotomy in the art world between the two. If you doubt this actually occurs in practice ask yourself how many paintings with wildlife as subject you've seen in museums. It is almost unheard of to find contemporary wildlife art shown in museums.

I think this is both silly and harmful. But it's also a complex situation. There's much wildlife art I don't like. It's cute, or formulaic, or slavishly photographic. So I've always felt myself much on the far outskirts of wildlife art. And yet there's no reason at all that it shouldn't be the subject of contemporary, high-quality art. When I started using birds as subject five or six years ago I could find extremely little contemporary art with wildlife as subjects that I liked.

But slowly I found a few people. And then I found a lot. A huge number of them could be found at one place: SWLA. So for me this is an acronym that packs quite a punch. It exemplifies, particularly in the work of many of its members, what wildlife can accomplish and what it should aspire to.

SWLA stands for Society of Wildlife Artists. For years I've looked through the work of its members and admired it. When I can afford to I've bought books of their work. For others I'm waiting, eagerly, for their first books to be published.

It is based in London but accepts international members. There is also an annual competitive show, called as of last year I believe, 'The Natural Eye.' The 48th annual exhibition is on exhibit now in London.

I applied for it a number of months ago. I thought it would be difficult to get into, not to mention difficult to figure out how to ship. Because of the costs of shipping though they allow international artists to apply first with digital images. If they are pre-selected then they need to ship their framed works for the show and go through a final judging.

My work was pre-selected! So I created new mats and frames and figured out how to ship it there, without truly extravagant costs. But I didn't anticipate customs, something I've never really dealt with. To make a long story short the prints were still in customs on the day of final judging. I gave up on being in the show.

Then a few weeks ago I heard from Mall Galleries that the prints had arrived and would be in the show. I couldn't believe it! My prints hanging with some of the artists I most admire. I put a small notice at the top of my blog under 'About Me' that referred to it. But I didn't want to write about it on the blog until I knew for sure that the prints were hanging. A week ago I wrote that I was in two shows in one week, both with acronyms. This is the other one.

So I looked for reviews after the opening last week. The best I've read so far has a number of photos. But it and other reviews all showed the work with light colored mats and light colored frames. Mine had neither. Was there a framing rule I'd missed that required them? Since even pre-selected work could be refused for improper framing I began to doubt that my work was finally in it.

Today it was confirmed that it is and has been hanging at show for last week or so! I think I need to pinch myself in order to truly believe this. I only wish I could see the show myself. The review mentioned above states how high the quality is and also mentions that the printmaking is 'stunning.' I couldn't ask for much more than that, other than to actually see it.

There is one more thing that would even be better: to have gone to the opening and to have met my online friends from the Wildlife Art thread of birdforum that are also in the show. The ones I know of are: Tim Wootton, winner of Birdwatch Artist of the Year award, Nick Derry and Adam Bowley. I don't think any of them were at opening and may not even get to show. But as I said that is the one thing that I could wish for to make being in the show even more exciting. And I've never seen their work, or the work of SWLA members, in person. I'd love to be able to do that, especially with mine hanging somewhere nearby.

****
I had to choose an illustration for this post. I could have chosen two prints that are in show but I've shown them before. One in fact is now the header image for this blog. That's the Blackburnian Warbler. The other print is the black and white linocut of the Louisiana Waterthrush and Ebony Jewelwing.

But since I've nearly finished the newest lino I decided to show it instead. It's at a point now where every little change makes a difference. I think it's done, outside of printing an edition on good paper. But I need to let it sit for a day of two to make sure it's done before printing an edition.

Finito!

I've just finished the linoleum block reduction print of a Blackburnian Warbler seen at Magee Marsh in Ohio in May, 2011. This print has been an ordeal, using 8 or maybe 9 or maybe even 10 colors. But in terms of color it's pretty much what I wanted.

In terms of registration well maybe not. Without a sophisticated registration system, and perhaps even with one, a print with 8 to 10 colors might not have the best registration. Still it's probably better than your average newspaper! The difference is that I don't care all that much.

I don't want total chaos but I do like the happy accidents and forced inexactitude that many colors creates. This could easily sound like an after the fact rationalization. But it's not. I just don't like finely done art, at least not from my own hand. I can admire it in the work of others. But for myself I start shaking when I verge to close to exactness. It's just not my character.

When I was a child I read something that said Native American artists(Indians in the lingo of the time) often left a mistake in their crafts because something that was perfect was a challenge to the gods or something like that. I'm sure I'm misremembering it. But it stuck with me. Who knows whether it had any influence on my aesthetics. I doubt it. But it is funny how I think about it as I verge away from anything that is too finely done.

I'm not sure how many readers are familiar with reduction linoleum block prints. What it means is that as you print one color you carve it away from the block after printing. By the time you're done there's almost nothing left to the block. The photo above shows what's left in the final inking. I'm getting fancy here and using two colors, the final green and a new orange for the throat. The smudges on the block are where the inking brayer tilted and got ink where I didn't want it. So I rubbed that area off before printing.

The final edition of this is 12, with 4 artist's proofs. They are nearly the same as the final edition. Because of the complex registration each print is really almost unique. The paper is 9x11 inches and the image itself is 6x8. I've used Gamblin oil-based ink and hand pulled each print on Rives Heavyweight paper. Eventually one or two will go up for sale on my Etsy site.

Blackburnian Warbler Version 6

Finally getting near the end here. And my guess is that I'll finish it before Congress raises the debt ceiling, if in fact it decides that's a better option than the full blown recession that seems heading our way.

Oddly enough for all the transmogrifications this print has gone through it's starting to look much as I'd planned. The vague idea is taking shape. I still plan to add a bright orange to just the throat and then replace much of the black in the foliage with green. Whether it will be a tinted green, as i'd originally planned, a medium leaf green, or a darker gray/green only time and experimentation will tell.

I do want to add that last fall I wrote a post on what I expected the November elections would bring: they would have the impact, and not a good one, of a mighty oak falling in the forest and destroying all that surrounds it. This was based on seeing just such a thing at Carpenter's Woods. That seems to be exactly what we've gotten. You get what you elect.

Where Did This Patience Come From?

I've never been a patient person. But as with most people age and experience has shown me that sometimes it pays to at least try to be patient.

In art it's easy to feel like I want the results now. I want that extremely vague idea in the back of my head to immediately appear as a finished masterpiece as soon as I begin a new work. I know some people like to work more slowly and almost meditatively. There's something appealing in the process of working itself, not just in the finished result.

I understand the second camp but I'm more with the impatient artists I'd say. Still I've learned that good work generally doesn't work that way. It is like true conversation. You have to look and listen to what the work is telling you. I know this might sound hopelessly mystical and nonsensical to non-artists. But really it's no different that a major league shortstop fielding a hard hit ball in an unfamiliar ballpark. The shortstop doesn't just methodically catch the ball, knowing exactly where it will go once it leaves the batter's bat. All sorts of odd things happen along the way. You need to stay alert.

The same is true in art. You need to stay alert and sometimes you have to take a lengthy road to get to your goal.

That's the case with reduction linocuts. When I began this print I anticipated six colors, a light orange, bright orange, yellow-green, blue, black and green. A light gray and dark burgundy were also possible for small accents.

As you can imagine printing at least six colors means a lot more work. So my thought is: if I'm going to make such a complex print I might as well make a large edition, assuming of course that the end result will be successful. So that adds more work. For this print I've done about 30 proofs and 18 actual prints. Each proof and print must be properly registered so that the various colors match up. For instance I don't want the black of the limb mistakenly appearing on the white of the birds breast because of sloppy registration.

So you can probably see this is time consuming. It comes as a great surprise to me, an impatient person, that I have the patience to go along with this lengthy process.

I printed the fourth color yesterday, as seen in the photo above. I'd have to say this was sloppy thinking on my part. I was looking for a grayish white that would show the whitish breast in shadow, but I also wanted a gray for some of the more distant limbs. Instead I got a very, dark gray, far darker than I'd anticipated. BUT there was something I liked about the strong contrast it created with the other colors.

Today though I realized that it was just too untrue to the breast of the Blackburnian warbler, even in the darkest shadow. So today I mixed up a largely transparent white. I inked just the breast and printed a proof. I wasn't thrilled with that so I inked the entire linoleum block, knowing that I could always print over areas that I didn't want to be white in the finished print. That looked far worse. So finally I went with the white in just one area, as shown at top.

There's one problem with that. It looks a bit ugly. Most of this is due, I think, to the fact that it is a loosely defined area. I know however that I'm planning to print the black breast streaking of the bird in that area. My hope, is that once the black is printed the breast will also look crisp.

But now I've done five colors and I foresee at least three more: black, bright orange and some sort of green. I'll probably determine that once I print the black. This means at least three more days work.

Where in the world did I get the sort of patience that allows me to spend over a week on a print? I'm not really sure. My guess is that it's a matter of hope springing eternal. Somewhere in the back of my mind I think the results will be worth the work.

If you wonder why, though, I don't do more reduction linocuts, I think you now have your answer.

Things to Do in 100 F Weather

Like much of the US we're going through some triple digit weather. Since we don't have air conditioning, and don't really want it, anywhere except the bedroom it tends to get a bit hot on days that are over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

But this is when a basement printing setup pays off. It's always a lot cooler in the basement and that's where I do my actual printing. So I look at the print and do the carving in my blazingly hot studio on the second floor. But then when I go to print it's cool. So I've spent the last three days working on this new reduction printn

It's based on a watercolor sketch I showed back in May or so of a Blackburnian I'd seeb at Magee Marsh in early May. Reduction prints are somewhat like a leap of faith. The 'faith' is in your ability to make the whole thing work. Maybe some people can clearly plan out the 5-10 colors that might be used in a reduction cut. But not me, and not most people I'd guess. I come up with a vague plan but then I base most of my further decisions on the proofs that I pull as I go along.

This proof has gone through three colors plus the white of the paper. You can still see some of the orange that was the first color. That was followed by the light blue, then the light yellow. I still plan on 3-5 more colors and the print might dictate still more. As I go along my faith is in my ability to react to what happens and still come up with something I'm happy with.

I'd guess another 3-5 days on this print, perhaps more.

Though it seemed accurate the neck on the juvenile white ibis that I showed a week or so ago seemed a bit thick. Some recent photos by others of the same bird at John Heinz NWR in Philadelphia that I happened upon on the web also showed how the neck can seem very thick when held a certain way.

But the neck can also look slimmer. I also felt like that watercolor didn't adequately show the variation in neck color. So above is a second watercolor of same bird, this time looking slimmer and doing a better job with the neck coloration I think.

I had no plans at all to do a lino of it. But as I've been working on the new lino..............

More Magee Warblers

I've been continuing to do small watercolor studies of some of the warblers we saw at and around Magee Marsh NWR during The Biggest Week in American Birding. I was looking through some of the photos I took and noticed one where you really couldn't see all that much of the orange of the Blackburnian. There was also a bit of orange in some of the surrounding foliage. So I decided to do a small watercolor based on that.

We also saw a number of Prothonotary warblers. I got one field sketch and a number of photos. One thing we both noticed in viewing them is that sometimes the yellow of the head and chest almost looked orange, almost as orange as a female Blackburnian. That's what I've emphasized here. We also got some good looks from above. That shows the extremely beautiful gradation of olive green on the back as well as the black and blue of the wings. So there may still be another watercolor showing that. There's also a nesting Prothonotary about 20 miles from here so I may make an attempt to get out and see and sketch him soon.

As I said these are just sketches. They're also on the Stillman and Birn Gamma sketchbook paper that I mentioned earlier. It's not made for extensive washes. And it does buckle with that much water. But it's amazing how much paint it will still take. It's really a great paper for watercolor studies like this.

I do want to do some more ambitious work with warblers. Pastels, larger watercolors, prints? I'm not sure which. But I'm working my way in that direction.

Speaking of Wood Warblers...

they may all be here tomorrow, at least if you live in the NE United States:Monumental Migration. Along with other migrants of course.

********************
Well it's noon on the day of the predicted fallout. I spent 3 hours at Carpenter's Woods in Philadelphia and found a few birds but not a whole lot more than I would have expected. The best bird was a female Blackburnian 50 feet away and 100 feet up flitting through the leaves. Not much of a view but fortunately it's hard to mistake a Blackburnian. But I almost did. There was another bird in the same area that I and another birder first thought was a Black-throated Green Warbler. About 15 minutes later I sketched the face as I remembered it. The face was bright yellow with dark auriculars.When I got home and checked the field guides though I wondered if it actually could have been the Blackburnian. It also has dark markings around the auriculars. And it was so far away. Finally though I stuck with the Black-throated Green. The color was yellow not yellow-orange and the auricular patch seemed more distinct than in the Blackburnian.

So it was nice to see these but it really wasn't a fallout. Other warblers included another Black-throated Blue feeding on Devil's Walking Stick, a male American Redstart and two Magnolia Warblers, one of them sketched from memory at lower right.. A Eastern Wood Pewee which has been there for weeks if not months was also there and is on top left of sketch. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds have also been regular visitors there and one is included on the sketch.

The most surprising bird was a Broad-winged Hawk. I'm sure that's not so unusual this time of year but because of the wooded nature of Carpenter's Woods you don't see that many. Mainly because you're not looking up at the sky.

All in all a beautiful day and a good day  of birding. But for me it wasn't a fallout day.  I hope it was for others.

Lone Palm Warbler

I spent three hours walking along the Wissahickon on Thursday. I had no intention of doing this. I was supposed to be inside working on a new painting. But sometimes it seems as if I'm forcing a new painting when I'm really not sure what I want to do. In that case it's often better to just drop it and go for a walk. Given that spring migrants are starting to arrive it wasn't hard to convince myself to do so.

It started off sunny but became overcast almost instantly and stayed that way. Unlike a week ago, where the woods was filled with the sounds and sights of birds, it couldn't have been quieter. When I finally got down to the water I found some small birds high in the hemlocks and sycamores. Unfortunately they had all their color washed out by the overcast sky. Among the birds I did find were: one Brown Creeper, one Golden-Crowned Kinglet, one American Goldfinch and some unidentified warblers. The gray sky, and lack of calls, left me no choice but to leave them unidentified.

From there I walked about a mile along the Wissahickon before doubling back on the other side of the water. Typical birds like Cardinals, Downy Woodpeckers, White-Breasted Nuthatches, et al., eventually totaled another 10 species.

When I got back to where I'd first seen the unidentified warblers one lone Palm Warbler, my first for 2008, made an appearance. He was still high in the sycamores and hemlocks, but his rich burnt siena color shone through the gray, and his constantly twitching tale, confirmed his identity. While moving closer to get a better view of him I flushed a Hermit Thrush out of some rhododendrons for the second time in the past couple of weeks. I've noticed that the Hermit Thrush doesn't have a twitching tail so much as one that seems to be operated like a hydraulic lift. It seems to land, slowly raise its tail up horizontally and then slowly lower it back down, as though it's being controlled hydraulically. One of the reasons that birding remains so rewarding is that there's always something new like this to notice.

The drawing at top is a small pen and watercolor sketch of a palm warbler based on a photo I took about this time two years ago at the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge. The one big difference is that bright sunshine accentuated the rich golden and burnt siena colors of the Palm Warbler. Though they're not all that uncommon they remain one of my favorite warblers, I think because of both their early appearance and their striking colors.

The Abandoned Painting

Though it was nice to be out I still had an abandoned painting to deal with when I got back home. Finally I decided to try some pen and ink sketches from some photos of a very cooperative Blackburnian Warbler that landed a few feet in front of my wife and myself last May. Working in pen and ink is a bit unforgiving. Unlike pencil or charcoal you can't erase your mistakes. This either gives an unbearably stiff quality to them, primarily from people who know all too well that you can't erase any marks that you put down, or alternatively can give them both greater sureness of touch and greater vitality. For some reason that seemed the best way to work my way towards a new painting. I guess it's sort of like thinking out loud, though in this case it's drawing out loud.

In doing 'bird' or 'wildlife' art my intent is both to be true to the subject matter and to make a work of art. As many people will tell you once you start talking about making 'art' you've made the task more complicated, not necessarily better just more complicated. I'm not going to go into great depth about this except to say that it can give some self-consciousness to the process that can be stifling. In my case for just this one new painting that included questions like: if I do a watercolor based on one the my recent photos of birds will they be too subject to the cropping/framing that often takes place in photos; do I really want to flatten out the space the way that some framing can do; do my photos have enough detail that I can adequately represent all parts of the bird; if some parts are in shadow do I know enough about the structure of birds to construct it from my imagination; am I making the painting too limited by sticking to what is in the photo; can I improvise elements that aren't in the photo; do i just want to do a vignette of a bird where it floats in empty space.

Well obviously this is enough to put anyone to sleep, including the artist! For whatever reason I finally decided to start a new large watercolor based on photos of the same Canada Warbler in more or less the same position taken over a 1-2 minute period. This is something of a multi-vignette and I have no idea how I'll tie all the separate subjects together. I've never tried anything like this before.

This is the initial pen and ink sketch. Tomorrow I start adding watercolor.