Completed Print and Brush Pen Sketches

I think it's been a week since I finished the combined linocut/woodcut of Winter Wren in leaves. But it's been a busy time and I haven't gotten around to showing it here yet. One of the reasons for the delay is that I've been out walking and birding and taking some photos.

As the weather gets colder it's harder to convince myself to sketch from life outside. I inevitably start going through my photos and field sketches looking for a subject for a new painting or print. That was the case recently with most of these brush pen (either Kuretake or Pentel) sketches. All but the Cooper's Hawk are from photos taken earlier this year. The earliest, above is a Great Egret with Forster's Tern at Jake's Landing near Cape May, NJ. I liked the scene but made a mistake in bringing the dark reflections on the water down so low that the tern more or less disappeared.

More recently I've seen a number of Eastern Chipmunks. Though I'd like to sketch them live, and occasionally they do sit still, I'm so unfamiliar with them that working from photos seemed like good practice. And of course the unadulterated cuteness of chipmunk and acorn was hard to ignore.

The Eastern Towhee above was I think from early spring. As usual I like it when I can see the full bird, head to toe. That makes it easier and to me more worthwhile sketching. With the full bird in sight it's much easier to get a sense of movement, weight, balance.  As usual it is hard to exaggerate the size of the tail.

The only recent photo was the basis of the sketch above. It is a Cooper's Hawk. You may agree with me that the one on the far right, where I ignored the feathers to a large extent, is much more successful. One of the things that I most like about using a brush pen is that I'm forced to be both simple, quick and decisive. It doesn't lend itself to tentative strokes.  And so I think there is an immediacy and sense of spontaneity that is appealing. On the other hand if you make a mistake you have to live with it, as in one of the chipmunk sketches above where the arm is much too small and out of scale.

I continue to do these sketches because I learn from them. And I'd like to incorporate their simplicity in my prints. Time will tell.

And finally the completed print of a Winter Wren in leaves. It is a combination print of linocut and woodcut. I printed it a few years ago as a black linocut. But I always felt that it wasn't as colorful as it might be. Since I wanted to experiment with a new water-soluble ink I returned to it as the basis for a color print. I printed the original linocut in black using the new ink, Caligo Safe-wash. I then used my old Daniel Smith ink to print orange on a woodblock and overprint the black. I then went back to the linocut and printed a Daniel Smith brown after having cut away more of the block to that some of the color created by orange over black remained. My intent was to cut a little more of the linocut away and then print Caligo black on top of the entire print. But as I proofed I kept feeling that the black was too dominant. I also found that the Caligo was too glossy and out of keeping with the more matte Daniel Smith. So in the end I carved away most of the linoleum block and then printed what remained with the very little Daniel Smith black that I still have.

I am happy with this and it's fulfilled my goal to a large extent of making the original Winter Wren print much more colorful.

Another Woodcut Finished

Crouching Green Heron. Two-block Woodcut by Ken Januski.

It's taken a while but I've finally finished the multi-block Crouching Green Heron woodcut above. It is an edition of 10, printed with Daniel Smith water-based inks on Rives Heavyweight paper. The entire print is 7x10 inches and the image alone is 4x6 inches.

It really isn't all that much different from when I last showed it. But I wanted to do something more with the background, especially in the top half of print. I also toyed with the idea of cleaning up some of the chisel marks in front of the heron that picked up various bits of ink.

Then I had a bright idea, something I should know to be wary of. I decided to cut the backside of one of the blocks as a third block. I would cut out the heron and the two horizontal stripes and then print one color over all that was left and then perhaps another on the upper area. Below you see the wo results.

Crouching Green Heron. Abandoned Proof of Two-block Woodcut by Ken Januski.

Crouching Green Heron. Abandoned Proof of Two-block Woodcut by Ken Januski.

As a test I showed one of them to Jerene without telling her that in fact I wasn't going to use this version. I wanted to see if her opinion was similar to mine. I DON'T LIKE IT!, she said. Well neither did I. I suppose with a lot of work it would be possible to get something usable out of it. But I much preferred the earlier version.

So I gave up on the idea of cleaning up the area in front of heron and opted to just concentrate on adding some vibrancy to the top half.  I was able to do that and give just a hint of detail as well. So as far as I'm concerned it worked out well, but not without a very scary detour!

It's not often I complete two woodcuts in a week and my guess is that it will be a long time before it happens again. I'll enjoy it while I can.

Young Green Herons and Peregrines

Three Young Green Herons. Woodcut by Ken Januski.

Three Young Green Herons. Woodcut by Ken Januski.

I've finished the woodcut of the three young Green Herons seen along the Manayunk Canal. Or perhaps I should say I've finished part of the edition. I'm not making any more changes to the print but I may print more prints than the 24 that I did yesterday. A few of them had minor problems so I'm debating printing some more so that I have an edition of at least 30.

The image itself is 6x8 inches and the print with border is 8x11. It is printed with water-soluble ink from Daniel Smith on Shin Torinoko paper. It was carved on Shina plywood.

This print moved along more easily and more predictably than most, I think because I spent a lot of time developing the drawing on which it is based. As I said earlier I might still do a color version of it, most likely with two or three colors printed on another block and then this black printed on top. But for now I wanted to stick with this simple image, something that's a bit unusual for me.

So that explains the 'herons' of the title but where are the peregrines? As  I was printing this edition in the basement yesterday Jerene yelled out from outside: "Ken, come here!" That's always a sign of rare birds, or at least something worth seeing. So out I came protective blue gloves and all to see three Peregrine Falcons circling high above. What a beautiful sight it was. Neither of us had binoculars, or really the time to go get them. The peregrines soared slowly and with great loft but given their height and the wide circles that they coursed they would have been gone long before either of us got back outside with binoculars. But we saw them in similar circumstances last year and I expect we'll be lucky enough to do so again. It's something to look forward to.

Perhaps eventually they'll end up in a print of some sort.

Completed Mergansers and Grebes Woodcut

Mergansers and Grebes on the Schuylkill River. Multi-block Reduction Woodcut by Ken Januski.

Done! Though inevitably as I print what should be the last state of a print I start thinking, 'Well I could do that or I could add this.' But Sometimes you just have to stop and save any new thoughts for a new print.

This is an edition of 15. The entire print is 9x11 inches and the image itself is 6x8 inches. I used Daniel Smith water soluble relief inks on Shin Torinoko paper from McClains. I had read that this paper, reasonably priced, was also good for use with multiple blocks. Since I knew I'd be using both reduction woodcut and multiple wood blocks it seemed like a good choice. And I have to say that it's held up well.

I'm quite happy I pursued this, especially the 5-6 abstract shapes that constituted the first image that I printed, way back when. They force this print out of the category of something you might actually see, I think, into the category of evoking something you might experience.

As returning readers well know I have a thing about photography. I doubt that it's far removed from the notion, apocryphal or not, that photographs steal your soul. To me they are always so much less that what I've seen and experienced.

I guess that's why I've always loved art. But wildlife art seems to be joined at the hip to photography. Numerous artists have complained about this but photographic wildlife art still seems to completely overwhelm any other type of wildlife art.

So since the day I started bird art, almost eight years ago now, I've wanted to create a type of art that is both naturalistic, in the sense that there is some sort of truth to the birds and other fauna and flora portrayed but that is also artistic, that is not limited by verisimilitude. A well known wildlife artist once questioned online my notion that artists can know too much. But surely they can, just like muscle bound athletes are limited. Knowledge is in the service of art and not the other way round.

In any case I found a few years ago that relief printmaking seemed to offer a way to combine naturalism and art. But I also found that I was still getting a little closer to photographic representation than I liked, even if it was fairly expressionistic.

So this print is really the first to really break out of that. The geometric shapes put a stumbling block in the way of representation, deliberately. In my mind they have served well in forcing me to keep this print about art, as well as about representation. All in all I'm quite happy with the results and hope that this will be a fruitful path to pursue. I'm pretty confident that it will.

A Finished Piping Plover Woodcut

Piping Plover at 'The Meadows' in Cape May, NJ. Multi-block Reduction Woodcut by Ken Januski.

Piping Plover at 'The Meadows' in Cape May, NJ. Multi-block Reduction Woodcut by Ken Januski

Well I kept it pretty simple. I added a third color on second woodblock which is barely visible, mainly toward the top. On the first woodblock, which was printed last, I printed black, and then just a few areas of orange, mainly in parts of the bill and legs but also scattered throughout the background. The third color on the first block really added almost nothing but I decided to keep small portions of it.

I'm happy with this print. I did what is next to impossible for me: keep it simple, also known as the KISS principle, a concept I first came across in computer programming: Keep it Simple Stupid! It probably applies in art as well. Don't trip over your own complications.

I wish the photos did justice to the print. They make it seem a bit crude I think and the blue/gray works much better than it seems to here. Perhaps I'll try more photos later. I've been surprisingly unhappy with my photos of prints recently but I'm not really sure why that is.

The print is 7x9 inches, with the image itself being 4x6. It is printed with Daniel Smith water soluble relief inks on Rives Lightweight printing paper. It is an edition of 12.

I've written about Piping Plovers numerous times. You can find the various post by using the search box at the bottom of this page. Though estimates vary the most recent data I could find in a quick search showed a total world population of 8000. In the US they seem evenly split between the East Coast and the Midwest.

Obviously they are a cute bird. But when you realize how few of them exist in the entire world you realize that they are far more than just cute. These were seen on the beach portion of 'The Meadows' at Cape May, NJ a few years ago. They are cute but also tough. Let's hope they're tough enough to withstand all of their challenges.

A Simple, So Far, Piping Plover Woodcut

Piping Plover at 'The Meadows'. Woodcut Proof by Ken Januski.

There's something appealing to me about the Shina woodblocks that I bought a few months ago. Perhaps the wood has a gentler surface than linoleum. I'm not sure. I also very much liked the way I was able to combine wood blocks in the Hummingbird Hawk Moth multiple block woodcut of a few months ago.

So with that as inspiration I've started this new multi-block woodcut based on a drawing I did last spring of a couple of Piping Plover seen at the beach of 'The Meadows' in Cape May, NJ.

It's almost impossible for me to keep anything simple. But I'm going to try here. Perhaps a gray of some sort, and then orange touches for bill and feet. It would be nice to do a woodcut/linocut that stayed simple from start to finish.

By the way this is printed with Daniel Smith water-soluble inks. This is the first time I've tried them and so far I'm pleased.