Sketching and Beautiful Weather

Young Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers with Ruby-throated Hummingbird. Ballpoint Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

We've seen beautiful late September weather here the last few days. But wait, it's only late July! I read recently that this may presage another long and brutal winter like last year's. If so we may regret this weather then but for now there's nothing to do but revel in it. And because of that I've found that each day I tell myself I have to be outside sketching rather than in the studio working on that woodcut that I started a few days ago.

Above is the work from today. On the left an immature Hairy Woodpecker with a Downy Woodpecker beneath him. The Downy was almost all white from this perspective with just a bit of black around eye and on underside of tail. The lack of black, esp. around eye made me think he also was an immature.

I've continued to spend a lot of time watching the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds that have been visiting our backyard. On the right side above are three drawings from today, the smallest of which was done from memory after he hovered two feet away from me for a few seconds. All too soon the hummingbirds will be gone so I'm really trying to take advantage of them while they're here. Oh yes, the bill of the hummingbird on lower left looks a bit odd because he's sticking out his tongue! I love being able to get such seemingly unusual behavior down in a sketchbook though I doubt that it's really all that unusual.

Eastern Kingbird, Question Mark Butterfly and Great Blue Heron in Field. Ballpoint Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

The drawings above were done at Morris Arboretum, though I think on different days. The Eastern Kingbird didn't stay for long so there's a lot of memory used in this drawing. Beneath him a Red Admiral that stayed for a few seconds, though not enough for me to get everything down. On the right one of three immature Great Blue Herons that were at Morris yesterday. I got a kick out of this one in the field. He was sketched live and some of the landscape was done at the same time. The rest of the landscape was improvised over the last 24 hours.

Before I move on to the delayed Green Heron woodcut I wanted to mention John Busby. After I posted the last post I realized that John Busby's most recent book, Looking at Birds: An Antidote to Field Guides, is the perfect book to encourage drawing encounters with birds, even if you just get the briefest of sketches. As I googled for the exact title of the book just now I ran across a video of John Busby sketching on the web site of author and artist John Muir Laws. When I posted this yesterday I hadn't yet had time to watch the full 24 minutes of the video. But today, a day later, I have. It is spectacular. About minute 15 or 16 he sits amid hundreds of gannets and mentions how he could never do a glorified portrait of one of them, in spite of their beauty. Take a look at most bird art shows and catalogs and that's all you'll see - glorified portraits, made possible only through photography. John Busby is interested in the full experience of seeing the birds and not just the birds but the birds in their environment. Towards the end he says that he thinks his goal might be for the viewer to wish he'd been there. And in that he succeeds. A far, far more lofty and worthwhile goal than all those deadly glorified portraits!!  And who knows what else you might find of interest on Laws' site.

Crouching Green Heron. Second Proof of Woodcut by Ken Januski.

Okay, back to the woodcut. I've done some minimal cleanup in the heron woodcut. I've also copied this onto a second block so that I can use at least one more color if I feel like it. Time will tell. I want to keep this pretty simple. I was really only trying to catch the striking pose. But once I printed it the pattern of the wood came out in the background and now I'm tempted to keep it, which of course is threatening to send the woodcut off in a different direction. I hope it rains soon so I can figure out what to do.

GBBC Day Three - Hard Work

Downy Woodpecker along Wissahickon. Watercolor by Ken Januski

It was hard work out birding today what with wind and cold temperatures. But the title refers not to me but to birds searching for food in winter. One of the first birds I saw today was a little white puffball amidst many gray and brown twigs. It looked so bright and fluffy that I assumed it was something manmade, some sort of plastic detritus stuck among the vegetation.

When I checked though it was a male Downy Woodpecker, much rounder than they normally are, due I'm sure to both the cold and the unusual perspective. Later I ran across more downies. One in particular was very close, down on the ground, first pecking at twigs then rustling through the leaf litter, picking ferociously. That's when I realized anew that getting food is indeed hard work for birds at this time of year.

Birds at feeders, especially the eminently cute Downy Woodpecker, can look almost as though they're putting on an endearing show for us. But today's views of the downies in particular show something different, they're working very hard just to stay alive.

As I said it was tough birding today. In 3 hours I saw a total of just 12 species. I knew when I decided to bird a familiar section of the Wissahickon today that I probably wouldn't up my count total for GBBC. But I've birded the Wissahickon each count for many years and I hated to skip it this year.

Birding often offers the thrill of the hunt and/or the pleasure of being outside on a beautiful day. Those latter days might go in the 'happy to be alive' category. Sometimes at Cape May in the fall, and in numerous other circumstances you can get great birding and great days. And then you can get great birding in miserable weather. I can remember many a colorful warbler seen at Shenandoah National Park in 40 degree very rainy weather.  And then there are days like today, when the birding is hard and not very rewarding but the day is as beautiful as could possibly be. That was today, full sun and blue skies. A good day to be alive, even if the birding was nothing to write home about.

Finished Edition of Downy Woodpecker and Canada Goose

I don't hang out with printmakers. But I get the feeling that with some, just as in any other specialized field, there can be a real emphasis on technique. If you're making a living printing other people's prints this makes sense. Your customers might be very exacting. But when I look at books on printmaking my eyes often glaze over. They may be technically accomplished but they seem dull to me.

Of course printmaking really is the people's art in the sense that anyone can do it if they use a simple medium like linocut. So I often see prints that I like online. Amateur prints sometimes seem more direct.

In any case this is all to say that I don't have good printmaking technique. But as I've continued half-way through year number two of linocuts I'm beginning to feel more comfortable with some technique. Probably my biggest and most unpleasant surprise as a printmaker was the difficulty in getting a good, clean print when I printed an edition.

By that I mean one where the flat colors were fully inked, without any blooms of missing ink, and yet where lines of white stayed white and didn't fill up with the ink. Too much ink so that the flat areas were fully saturated and then the lines also filled in with ink. Or vice versa.

Then there was the struggle with pressure on the baren, the device used to put pressure on the paper that sat on top of the inked block. Too little pressure and the ink on print was too light. Too much and not only might the incised lines fill in with ink but the paper also might start being pulled apart, one little lint-filled piece at a time.

If I had my own press I wouldn't need to worry about the pressure applied on the baren. But I'd probably have other more complicated problems. So until I have a waiting list to buy my prints I'll stick with hand pressure using a baren.

I often expect the actual printing of an edition to be somewhat grueling. Will the combination of ink, paper and baren work correctly? Will I get a good edition of the size I'd hoped for?

Above is most of the printed edition. I was quite happily surprised when this edition proved to run quite smoothly. I used a fairly new ink, which I haven't used much, Caligo Safe Wash Ink, an oil based ink that can be cleaned with soap and water. I also used a new paper: Rives Heavyweight. I've used Rives BFK in the past but it seems too think and unabsorbent for hand rubbed linos. I've also used Rives Lightweight but sometimes it seemed too light and apt to tear. (Well I'm afraid I was mistaken here. A few days after posting this I needed to organize some prints for a competition. As I did so I had to add the specifics for each. As I did so I realized that most of them were Rives Heavyweight! I'd only recently turned to Lightweight and had completely forgotten the many prints with Heavyweight). And finally I used a new Speedball baren that I received for Christmas rather than the bamboo barens I had been using. I'm not sure what the main factor was but they all worked together beautifully.

In the final analysis the most difficult part was signing them. First I forgot that it was 2012 not 2011. In printmaking an edition is usually labeled in the form of 1/12, meaning print 1 of an edition of 12. I knew that there was a problem when I went to write 13/12 today. Oops the edition was 16, not 12.

Delayed by a Gull

I've done a fair amount of work on the linocut of the Downy Woodpecker and Canada Goose since I showed the earlier states here. But the late April/early May weather here has made it hard to stay inside and work in the studio.

Today we were near Flatrock Dam along the Manayunk Canal in the morning. In the roiling waters perched on a huge slab of stone stood a gull I didn't recognize. That doesn't say much since I just don't know gulls. Often I see a mature Great Black-backed Gull there. But this bird looked more slender, though possibly as large, and definitely didn't have the rich charcoal gray of the mature Great Black-backed.

I tried a couple of field sketches, in lower right corner above, but they don't show much. One thing that struck me was the long and seemingly slender neck. He also looked pear-shaped from the front. That's what these two sketches tried to capture.

I also took some photos. And though the gull was quite distant I was able to do some sketches based on them. Drawing them helps me often to see things I wasn't sure of when I saw the bird live, like just how big the bill is.

Seeing the bird live I noticed most his slenderness, at least around the neck. That made me think it wasn't a Great Black-backed. But birds can often look more slender than normal when they stretch our their neck. As I drew the huge bill I came to the conclusion that it was a Great Black-backed, in spite of the seeming slenderness.

I also was quite taken by the roaring and roiling water around him. I've never tried to paint such a scene but today I just had to. One of my friends has spent a lot of time recently painting seascapes. She knows how complicated they are, how important it is to begin to understand water. I don't. But I still felt like I just had to give it a try.

Above is the latest stage of the lino. I haven't touched it in a couple of days. If we ever get some bad weather I'll get back to it. I am happy with it and would like to print an edition. But this good weather can be very distracting.

From Field to Print

You might think that with a new baren, a new copy of Robert Gillmor's 'Cutting Away' and a stack of new printmaking paper all in the studio as of late 2011 that I'd be eager to get back to linocuts. Perhaps, but I just never could convince myself of a subject.

I have considered a couple subjects including the first version of the Solitary Sandpiper with the Twelve-spotted Skimmer but I just couldn't convince myself.

This Tuesday I spent over four hours wandering around the wetlands of Morris Arboretum. I kept hoping for first of year Kildeer or Eastern Phoebes. No such luck. Even the birds I did see weren't very close so I didn't get good field sketches either. I at least hoped to see again the first of year Swamp Sparrow that we'd seen on Sunday. They're a subtly beautiful bird.

While buried in a shaded scrubby area hoping for the Swmap Sparrow a Downy Woodpecker flew in. Soon a Canada Goose wandered by behind him, prospecting the sunny grass for food. At the bottom right of the field sketch above I hurriedly sketched a little thumbnail of the scene: Downy in shade, with big lumbering Canada Goose in the sunshine behind him.

As I thought about doing a new print I liked the idea of developing this tiny sketch. That is what I did above. I also made some unsuccessful attempts to sketch the newly arrived Tree Swallows in flight. They didn't work out at all but nonetheless I decided to incorporate one in the sketch and two in the lino. They're so small and indecipherable that they may disappear from the lino before I'm done.

But for now they stay. This is about proof number 5 or 6 on the lino. The block is tiny at 4x6 inches. But sometimes smaller prints lead to greater freedom. I rarely like the appearance of a lino at this early stage. But I'm happy with this one. This is done with cheap ink on printer paper. Once it's more developed I'll turn good ink on some of that new printmaking paper. And the watercolor of the Swamp Saprrow, which I finally saw and photographed, will have to wait.