Almost an Anniversary

I'm not big on landmark dates and it's only by accident that I realized that it's just about the second anniversary of this blog. It will be almost for awhile because I started in on February 29, 2008. There will be no 02.29 this year. Or next.

So I guess that it's today or nothing. When I began this I thought that it would be more writing than art, and would probably be more about birds and nature than about art. But I knew that I wanted art in the title because it would inevitably make an appearance.

I was happy to discover that there are a wealth of people writing well about both birds and nature on the web. Many of them have more experience, more passion, more interest than I do. I have all of them just not so much as many others. And I also realized I didn't like much of the bird and wildlife art I saw on the web. Maybe I could do some wildlife art that I liked. Since I've spent far more of my life with art than with nature the blog has headed off in that direction.

Birds and nature are still the subject of the art but art itself has gained prominence. I'm happy with that. It's where my talents lie.

I'm including one photo here. It's a synopsis of the last two posts, various studies and the finished drawing that came about from seeing the Cooper's Hawk on Friday. It shows to an extent how I work: try one medium, then maybe another, maybe back to the first, until eventually I feel like I've portrayed the subject in the way that I want.

A year ago I probably would have tried one medium or two at best for a particular subject. Now I'll thry three or four. In time I might add oil paint. But I think this is the way art works best. You keep trying until you get it the way you want. Part of this is that I'm devoting more time to art. Much of this I'm sure is due to the fine example set by the artists of the Wildlife Art section of birdforum.net. Seeing such high quality work on a daily basis has been a great stimulus.

And I'm sure that part of it too is due to my readers. I never really thought much about them/you when I started this. But I have enjoyed all the readers, both the anonymous ones whose name I'll never know as well as those who comment with some regularity. An artists toughest and most important critic is always himself. But it's nice to know that there are some other people enjoying what he or she does as well.

Late Blog Anniversary

It's been over 13 months since I started this blog and I wanted to write a short anniversary note.

I wasn't really sure what I was going to do here. I hoped to use it to show new sketches, perhaps more developed drawings and paintings, and write about my birding and other nature-oriented activities.

In some ways it's been wildly successful: I think it's really been an impetus for me to do more artwork. I can't argue with that. The more time I spend on art the better.

Writing about birding and nature has not been as successful. But that's really because I've learned that though I am interested in them there are very many other bloggers writing similar blogs and my observations aren't really anything special. So I started off writing more about birds and nature but slowly I changed to writing more about art, especially art that has birds or nature as it's subject.

That seems to me to have been a pretty organic evolution. I'm sure readers might sometimes wonder just what kind of hodgepodge blog I have: sometimes it's about birding, sometimes about art, sometimes something else. Well every blog has a right to be just what it wants and hope that it finds an audience. I think along those lines. But I also think that it's grown into a blog with a fairly predictable subject: art about nature, especially my own art.

Another huge aspect of blogging though is the people I've met visiting their blogs, and sometimes welcoming them as visitors here. I was a skeptic about blogs for many years. Who would be interested in someone's personal writings, especially a few, million 'someones'? Well I found that I became quite attached to certain blogs and get a great deal of pleasure from reading them. I also feel that I've become part of a community. I'm not going to name any particular blogs here but blogs where I comment frequently will know that they are among them. As I said this has been one of the most pleasant surprises of the blogosphere.

Finally there's something I've kept out of this blog: art theory. As readers of other blogs know I can sometimes expound at length about art theory. This is a dangerous tendency and I've often felt that I ought to expound here if I'm going to go on at such length. But I don't. I may mention it once in awhile but I don't go at length about contemporary art history and theory as I have on other blogs. I think it would be too disjointed if I were to do so here. And I think it takes away from my main goal: to create art. So art theory is something that I'll continue to avoid here and probably on other blogs as well. Art theory is fine but I think for most artists they should really convince themselves that they don't have time for it. It can be enervating rather than inspirational. Enough said on that!

So Happy Anniversary to this blog and to all its readers!