Me and Igor

Cedar Wawings In Juniper. Mokuhanga by Ken Januski. Copyright 2026.

I have used names of famous people in titling works or in naming posts a few times in my career, really more of a homage than as anything else. In the Hemingway of last post it was neither. In fact a recent rereading of Hemingway was quite disappointing. I used him because his quote on when to stop working on a creative work for the day made a lot of sense. Quite a bit back in the past I referred to Thelonious Monk or his musical compositions in titles to some abstract paintings. This was strictly as a homage, but also as someone who understood little about jazz. I just liked it and him and I suppose I also hoped some of his artistry would magically land on my canvases just through my reference to him.

Igor in this title refers to Igor Stravinsky. I'm using his name in the title because twice in the last 20-30 years a work of his has reminded me that I don't live in the 19th century. Years ago it was 'Rite of Spring.' Last year it was 'Le Noces,' a ballet by him. Both of them were just shocking! Not in a bad way, but in an exciting way, seeming at least to me to show a type of music that I'd never heard before. The freshness and imagination were almost beyond comprehension.

I'm writing about this because once you've been exposed to that type of excitement about a work of art, it's hard to forget it. A recent rehearing of both works just showed how lasting their impact has been. So as I'm making art that is based on portraying the natural world, specifically birds, I occasionally ask myself: "What in the hell are you doing?"Are you not doing something that is astonishingly anachronistic?"

On the other hand particularly with portraying animals, and probably people as well though I've rarely used them as subject myself, there is I think a really primitive, almost atavistic desire to just portray them, to translate their living selves into something that also lives on paper or canvas. This has always been part of my goal and I greatly admire artists who pursue it honestly and not sentimentally. I think it will always be a very important part of some art.

For me however I also care about the language I use. Most artists also do to some degree or another. Whether it is words, harmony, rhythm, color, shape or whatever many artists know that they are using a language unique to their art and they want to keep that language fresh and alive. They tire of using the language of 100 years ago. It is that thought which the music of Stravinsky always brings to mind: what a new language he is using!

So when I came to do the mokuhanga of numerous Cedar Waxwings that I'd seen in early fall, especially in Junipers I had no desire AT ALL to portray them in a traditional manner. I would say that this was true of almost every print I've ever made. I am always trying to capture the life and animation of my subjects but never in a traditional way. All of this is more or less to explain how this print came about. I wanted to give some sense of waxwings and waxwings moving in junipers, but I also wanted to do so in a way that seemed fresh, that did not look like it had been created 150-200 years ago.

Maybe this is why so many people have at some time railed against any 'modern' type of art. It is a threat; it is disruptive; it can stick with you whether you want it to or not. But in my case I"m quite happy that it has. The more I look at art, of any type, the more I realize how many artists were just like this. They needed to find a new way to use their language. It is just as basic I think as the drive to portray on paper or canvas the life of things you see around you, especially animate objects. To me it Is a thrilling quest.

 

Me and Hemingway

Cedar Waxwings in Juniper Mokuhanga. Edition in progress with 2.5 blocks printed. Copyright 2025 by Ken Januski

When I was in high school, at least my recollection is that it was high school, I used to read The Paris Reviews hardbound collected interviews with authors. I must have gotten them from the local library. Anyway part of the interview with Ernest Hemingway struck me: he said he only stopped writing when he knew what he would write at the start of the next writing day. Who knows why this struck me other than that it was a specific method. 

Today I am using that method but expanding it from a day to a year. I’m ending 2025 with 2.5 blocks printed for this edition of my new moku hanga ‘Cedar Waxwings in Juniper.’ I will print the other color on this block, thus finishing off block number 3 as well as blocks 4 and 5 in 2026. I will post something on the finished print then.

 

Incisive Sketches

'Incisive' is often used to describe a person's mental abilities I think. It indicates sharpness, an ability to see the important things through all the unimportant when viewing a problem. I'm not claiming that for me or my drawings, at least not for me in particular.

Actually it's almost the opposite. Almost all drawings are incisive. For me one of the most useful aspects of drawing is its ability to be incisive, to seek out the structure underneath the fluff and glitz. Not all drawing by  every person does this. But most do. It seems to be almost a primordial part of Western drawing if not all drawing.

I've  written about this before but it always strikes me afresh. There's something almost analytical and surgical about sketching. You try to see underneath the murk to the real thing.

I don't mean this in a mystical way, bur instead in a scientific way. I particularly mention  it with these drawings because they're all done from photos I've taken. What I always find with photos is that I need to see beneath the surface of masses color or tone and figure out how the underlying object is put together. With birds it's a question of what those feasthers are on the back and how do they relate to the wing feathers. Where do the legs go into the torso and how is the bird balanced on them.

For me, especially when working from photos like this, I feel like the pen or pencil I hold in my hand is like a scalpel trying to figure out the three-dimensional structure of what photography has turned into a flat two-dimentions. I'll in turn return it to the two dimenions of the paper on which I draw. But as I do so I  want it to be informed by my understanding of its three dimensions.

The drawing above is a pencil drawing on Stillman and Birn Gamma series sketchbook, size 7x10 inches. I haven't used these sketchbooks in awhile but they've always worked well for pencil sketches like this, among other  things.

Above is another sketch of the same Great Black-backed Gull seen near Flat Rock Dam on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia a few days after Hurricane Sandy. I was there looking for any birds displaced to our area by the hurricane.Though I didn't really  find any I always enjoy seeing some of our more common birds, including Great Black-backed Gulls.

When I do drawings such as this I never intend them as finished works. Instead I do them with the intention of learning something. I hope that when I'm done I'll have a better idea of the structure of  the bird drawn. That knowledge in turn will be put to use in some drawing, painting or print in the future.

These two drawings were started while I gallery  sat for 3 hours this morning at the 'Wild at Art' show I'm in at the Manayunk Roxborough Art Center. And there were no visitors! Come on local readers, assuming there are some, I/we need some visitors and some sales! Still it was time well used. But it would be nice to see more visitors to the gallery  both for the current show and all shows. It's open 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays.

Yesterday I tried another drawing from a photo, this one a smaller ballpoint pen drawing of two Cedar Waxwings on Stillman and Birn Beta Series paper. The birds themselves are somewhat successful though both show I think that I couldn't fully understand their structure from looking at the photo I used as my source. Worse I really was not successful rendering the bark of the tree in which they perched. Still I learned something in doing so.

I very rarely do a finished painting or print directly  from a photo I've taken and never from someone else's photo. But these sort of sketches seem to exorcise the photos in some way so that I later feel more comfortable using the drawings as the start of a painting or print. I know it seems odd. But it's true nonetheless. I think one reason is that the sketches make me feel a little clearer about the structure of whatever I'm painting. They're also like a warmup  exercise, like playing scales. All part of the process of making a work of art.

Painting at the Speed of Warblers

Wood warblers are moving through again on their southbound migration, staying still for all of a split second before directing their attention or perhaps their entire body to a new potential food source. I've written about this before. Their quick movement, often hidden behind foliage, makes identification difficult and sketching almost impossible.

And yet I can't help but want to get them down on paper. So today I returned to an old trick: sketching while watching 'Watching Warblers' by Michael Male and Judy Fieth. It's a great film to begin with but it's also very good for practicing on warblers. The reason is that they move just as fast here as they do in real life. The main difference is that these are pretty much out in the open and you can practice one species after another.

I'd been wanting to try them in watercolor so that's what I did today. I knew I wouldn't begin to have time to consider color though. I know this seems like a crime given the spectacular colors of wood warblers but that wasn't my concern here. I just wanted to practice getting down their shape. So I mixed up one color from Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Umber and Raw Sienna. That was enough to work with it.

To my surprise I found I liked this medium better than any I've yet tried for sketching warblers. The speed of the brush, a Winsor and Newton No. 7 series, number 1, seemed equal to the birds. Finally I felt like I found something that might have a chance of keeping up with the birds.

I think part of this, as I've mentioned in previous posts about 'painting with a brush', is that a good brush is a wonder of a tool. It can make fine lines, broad areas of tone and color and everything in between. In one nanosecond it can make the line of the bill of a wood warbler and one nanosecond later it can be used broadly to create an entire wing. It can do the spot of an eye, then instantly the entire head above it.

I'm not going to identify the warblers here. Some may be recognizable, and maybe most not. I'd guess there are about 20 species portrayed. But the important thing I've learned is that it might be possible to try this setup in the field when sketching warblers from life. It will still be difficult because I need to hold water, sketchbook, brush and binoculars all at the same time, with just two hands. But I think it's worth a try.

I also wanted to show the final version of the Cedar Waxwings pastel. It's gone through many changes only to end up back pretty close to the original version.

On Second Thought

My primary artistic style isn't bold or impatient, regardless of what I said in the last post. I realized this as I started work on the pastel drawing at top of a number of Cedar Waxwings.

I'm sure some readers may be getting a bit bored with something so self-referential as my 'style' so I'll keep it short. I began this drawing by looking through my sketchbook of field sketches. There I saw one of Cedar Waxwing that I liked. That got me to looking through the photos I'd done of Cedar Waxwings, which in turn got me to do numerous pencil sketches. Then I tried some thumbnail designs, moving birds this way and that until I had a pleasing, and believable, composition.

Then I forgot much of what I'd just done and scribbled the three birds onto a 14x17 sheet of Strathmore #500 Bristol paper. And this is where 'style' comes in.

I was reminded once again that I really like to improvise, to put something on paper or canvas and then respond to that. That's what I did here. Within 10 minutes all birds had changed position or shape or size. It's been said that some artists, for instance Beethoven I think, and Hitchcock, have a mental picture of their work before they start. They just transpose it into the proper medium. For me I don't really know what I'm doing until the medium gives me some clues. My plans are very vague.

Not all my work is this way. Some try to stay truer to the subject and keep improvisation in check. But my background and my preference is improvisation. I like a dialog with the medium in which I work. This is where I'm comfortable.

I'm not sure if the dialog with these Cedar Waxwings is done. Most likely I'll do some more work on it. Hopefully this will be the end of 'style' comments for awhile. My guess is that it gets tiresome for those who come hear to read something about birds and/or nature.