Moku Hanga Number Two - Jumping Squirrel, Kingbird, Damselfly, Butterfly)

Jumping Gray Squirrel, Eastern  Kingbird, Ebony Jewelwing  and Zabulon Skipper Moku Hanga print by Ken Januski. On Nishinouchi paper.

It's been quite a while since I posted here and though I've been working on a new print for some time I wanted to wait until the print was finished before posting. Above is one of the  finished prints. I've done 10-11 and am debating whether to print a few more in the edition. Given all the prepartory work it  always seems silly not to print a  relatively large edition. On the other hand it is more work!

Spring is a time of  almost too much natural wealth. There is so much  so see, hear, experience, and perhaps  draw, paint or photograph from life. But how do you  choose a subject for  an artwork? For me it  often comes from a quick sketch that I've done.

Below you can see the field sketch of  an Eastern Kingbird that led to this print. It probably wouldn't have just based on the kingbird sketch, but while I was sketching it a Gray Squirrel seemed to jump up straight in the air between me and the kingbird. Perhaps he saw a snake,  maybe a grasshopper,  or maybe he was just being squirrelly. In any case I tried to get some sense of it  down in my sketchbook.

As I said these chance encounters often lead to more developed work. My guess is that there seems to be a subject to portray, something more than just a portrait or study. In any case after I got  home I started doing various compositional  studies for a print, as well as studies as to just how a squirrel that jumped straight up in the air might look.  As I did so I realized how poorly I understood squirrel anatomy. So  I did some sketches based on photos I've taken over the years.

Field Sketch  and Studies for Moku  Hanga Print.

Studies for Squirrel Moku Hanga Print.

I'm not going to show all of the various compositional  studies I made. But finally I came up  with what I wanted. I then drew that with a brush pen onto a tissue like paper, pasted it  down on the block that would be the  key block(the one with most detail, and at least for me printed in black), and eventually printed that block onto more tissue (Usu Mino paper)  that I then pasted in reverse onto the other blocks to  be carved. Below is an example. I overdid  the amount of  Nori used to paste down the drawing(kyogo) and that is what the blotches are in photo below.

Anyone who's familiar with moku hanga will know what kento marks are but most people will not. They  are registration marks carved into the block itself so that there is a greater likelihood of  prints matching up as you print more and more colors. In the kyogo below you can see that I've also included the kento marks from the key block. Once the kyogo dried I used it as a guide as I carved away  the non-printing areas and just left the areas I planned to print in color.

Pasted down Kyogo for color block.

Below are the other blocks, well actually other block. Since both sides of each block can be printed I can get four blocks from two blocks. Additionally I can print more than one color  on some of the blocks, though I do  have to be careful as I ink up the areas not to brush the wrong color into an area. Below all of  the blocks except the black key block have more than one color: gray and blue, brown and a tiny orange area(for the skipper butterfly) and yellow and  a tiny second area  of black (for the squirrel's eye).

Blue and Gray, and Black Blocks for Moku Hanga print.

Yellow and Brown Blocks for Moku Hanga Print.

As the title says this is just my second moku hanga print. I'm happy to say it was  not as tortuous as the  first. All printmaking methods seem to require a fair amount of  technical  knowledge and skill, something I really have never liked. But the more  I print, regardless  of  method of printmaking, the more I realize that I just  won't  be successful without some technical knowledge and skill. Moku hanga seems more complicated than other methods I've tried.

Its virtue though is  that  it can lead to beautiful prints, that is almost thoroughly non-toxic, assuming  you don't eat any of  your paints/inks, and it requires very little space. I used to print in the basement after carving and designing my prints in my second floor studio. Now I do all my work in the studio. I only go to the basement to clean up.

There are many technical problems with moku hanga but  based on  my vast experience of two prints I'd  say that the most difficult is  getting consistent ink coverage. This print is not perfect but I've gotten much better with ink coverage. Registration is better and smudges are fewer. It will remain a learning experience. But it is one where I see a bright future.

From what I can see of contemporary moku hanga a great deal of it  is done with fields  of color  and NO lines. Since the mastery of line, and other things, seen in ukiyo-e artists and printmakers seems absolutely impossible  to match  today I  have some understanding of this. Who wants to compete with Hokusai? But  I  like  line and see  no reason to keep it out of my prints. I also , as in most of my work, like to combine naturalism and abstraction. It was that which made printmaking appealing to me to begin with. It is even more so with moku hanga.

Highlights of the Natural Year - 2015, Part 1

Ebony Jewelwing. Photo by Ken Januski.

Over the last couple of years I've ended the year on this blog with a post about my best reading of each year. Delacroix's Journal was near the top both years as I recall. Though I'm tempted to do the same year I'm instead going to show some of the highlights of the natural year, experiences in nature that were most memorable.

For whatever reason one of the most striking was a huge hatch of Ebony Jewelwings seen at Morris Arboretum. In one corner of the Arboretum, between the Wissahickon and Paper Mill Run, a tributary of the Wissahickon, every step I took brought up 3-5 new damselflies. They've always been one of my favorites but I generally see just one or two at a time. In this case there were easily 100. The only somewhat comparable experience was a wealth of Autumn Meadowhawks at John Heinz NWR it the fall. But this isn't the first time we've seen many of them in the fall, most notably at Magee Marsh near Toledo, OH, so they weren't quite as striking. Still they do illustrate one of the many wonders of nature: not rarity but almost the opposite, fecundity.

With that introduction to this post made I'll now move on to a more chronological list.

Hundreds of Snow Geese Flying over Morris Arboretum. Photo by Ken Januski.
 

I didn't really intend to continue the fecundity theme but it turns out that one of the earliest natural highlights was the momentary appearance of hundreds of Snow Geese over Morris Arboretum on January 25, 2015. I chose this photo not because it looks like much but because it does give an idea of the numbers. I believe that I counted a total of 225.

Peregrine on Church Steeple. Watercolor by Ken Januski.

As I've written before we don't see many Peregrine Falcons. The most memorable have been at Cape May, NJ and at Forsythe NWR also I NJ. Then we heard that they nested very close to where we live, less than a mile away actually. Since then we've seen them more and more frequently, especially when they are actively feeding the young and when the young are just starting to fly. It is always a great thrill to see and hear the young ones briefly fly high above our backyard. But I was particularly surprised to find this one, perched on the same church steeple where they nest, on the first day of the Great Backyard Bird Count, on February 13, 2015. This is a small watercolor I did of it.

Red-breasted and Common Merganser with Bufflehead. Woodcut by Ken Januski

Red-breasted and Common Merganser with Bufflehead. Watercolor Sketch by Ken Januski.

Soon after seeing the Peregrine I saw my first ever Red-breasted Merganser at Flat Rock Dam in the nearby Schuylkill River, along with two Common Merganser and two Bufflehead. I did the watercolor sketch soon afterwards and then eventually used it as the basis for the woodcut. Despite my best intentions the woodcut did not turn out as well as I had hoped. But my prints often involve experimenting with something new, moving on rather than consolidating knowledge and skill. So perhaps I bit off more than I should have.

Long-eared Owl. Watercolor Sketch by Ken Januski.

Though we've birded quite a bit over the last 20 years we haven't seen that many owls. So when Long-eared Owls were reported at John Heinz NWR in SW Philadelphia and they seemed to stay there for a few days we just had to take a chance and head down to look for them. Though there was only one left and it was buried in a tangle and thus hard to see or photograph I did manage to make this quick watercolor sketch based on some of the photos. As birders often don't seem to recognize the need not to intrude on unusual birds, especially owls, we didn't stick around as long as we might have with some other birds. Still it was a great thrill to see the bird. Recently I received Scott Weidensaul's new book on owls and the photos remind me of the orange face which we only briefly saw. How nice it would have been to be able to see and capture that in paint. Perhaps next time.

We have been fortunate enough to see and hear Great Horned Owls numerous times this year in Philadelphia so our luck with owls seems to be getting better. Though we rarely saw them we used to go to sleep to Barred Owls calling when we regularly vacationed at Lewis Mountain Campgrounds at Shenandoah National Park 10 years or so ago.

Canvasback and Hooded Merganser. Charcoal Drawing by Ken Januski.

Canvasback and Hooded Merganser. Ball Point Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

One of the ducks I've always wanted to see but haven't is the Canvasback. I'm sure I read somewhere of it being called the Aristocrat of Ducks. It's easy to see why with that seemingly noble forehead and beak, not to mention the striking colors, especially in the drake. We saw our first ever at the Manayunk Canal in early spring then saw the drake above at Morris Arboretum where it stuck around for at least two weeks as I recall. And with him were numerous Hooded Mergansers, perhaps the Crown Princes and Princesses of Ducks. When I saw the two drakes together I couldn't resist a large charcoal drawing, shown above as well as a woodcut. The also offered one of the first chances, along with the Long-eared Owl, for field sketches in 2015.

Next it will be time for the first warbler of 2015. That means spring and probably the time for a separate installment of this post.

Green Jewels of June

Ruby-throated Hummingbird on Monarda. Sumi Brush Pen and Watercolor Sketch by Ken Januski.

Ebony Jewelwing on Leaf. Sumi Brush Pen and Watercolor Sketch by Ken Januski.

June brings two green jewels to Philadelphia each year, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird, whose back always has some green on it, and the Ebony Jewelwing damselfly, where the male is a brilliant blue/green, though his wings are black(ebony) as could be.

As I've continued to experiment with the Kuretake Sumi Brush Pen, so much so in fact that the first ink cartridge is drying up, I've decided to try it with both of these green jewels as subject. Above both are done first with the brush pen. Then I added a bit of watercolor for color. Since the ink is water-soluble it runs a bit. Given my style that does no harm. But I am investigating how to use permanent ink in the pen.

Ebony Jewelwing and Ruby-throated Hummingbird. Sumi Brush Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

I've always planned to use the pen primarily for field sketching. Finally today I did do with the 20-30 Ebony Jewelwings, the most I've ever seen at one time, at Morris Arboretum. This was a matter of looking through binoculars, trying to remember what I saw, then putting it down, at a very small scale in my sketchbook. Not great but at least recognizable. That's a good base to build from. When I got home I saw the first Ruby-throated Hummingbird in our yard for today. They or it has been here for 4 days straight, feeding primarily on trumpet honeysuckle. The sketch is done from memory later. At this time of year I rarely have drawing utensils with me when they appear so I stare until they leave, trying to memorize the bird and it's movements.

Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. Sumi Brush Pen Sketches by Ken Januski.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird. Sumi Brush Pen and Watercolor Sketch by Ken Januski.

Above are two more sumi brush pen sketches of hummingbirds from photos. In the bottom one I've added watercolor. It may seem hard to believe but one of my purposes in trying the pen was to find a way to sketch my subjects with lines of varying width. This works well in sumi and I'd also like to use the varying line width in my prints as so many have done before me. I haven't really done that much yet in my prints but I hope the sumi sketches will help in that transition.

Below is a woodcut of a Ruby-throated Hummingbird seen in our yard last year and a linocut of an Ebony Jewelwing and Louisiana Waterthrush from 2011. I'm sure more prints will eventually appear.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird on Yew Twig. Woodcut by Ken Januski.

Louisiana Waterthrush and Ebony Jewelwing.Linocut by Ken Januski.

Back in a Gallery

When I first moved to Philadelphia I spent the bulk of my time making art. Making a living, paying bills, etc. was secondary. Not that I didn't pay my bills. Just that I didn't make a steady job whose primary purpose would really be to pay the bills become my top priority.

At that time I had a studio next to the not-yet-renovated Ben Franklin Hotel on Chestnut St. in Philadelphia. What time I didn't spend painting and drawing I spent doing the dirty work of trying to get my work shown. To make a long story short I spent a lot of time photographing my work, then manually masking the slides I got back so that the work itself was accentuated, then working up the nerve to walk into what I thought where the most high quality galleries in Phildelphia and asking them to give me a show.

Why was a show so important? Well at that time there was no internet. If I wanted to make a living from my art I had to have someone buy it and the primary, in fact almost the only, venue for that was commercial galleries. The other option was juried shows at various institutions and I also spent a lot of time applying to them, with about a 50% success rate. And of course there were fellowships, what I and many of my friends called 'The Lottery.'

I'm not a purist about art, though I suppose I might have started out that way. But I understood fairly early on that you had to SELL work in order to survive, and the main outlet for that was commercial galleries.

But after I'd visited most of the galleries I was interested in and having a number of them come to my studio and look at my work I still didn't have the promise of a show.

Eventually those aforementioned bills took their toll and it was either ignore them or get a full-time job. So I got a job. That cut into my time but I still made art and tried to get shows.

At some point though, as I mention on my web site, I began to doubt that I was going to be able to show in the galleries I wanted to. They continued toward 'ideational' art, where ideas, quite flimsy ideas to my mind, and verbiage replaced visual substance. So much work seemed to need a lot of 'verbal advertising' in order to get any attention. This trend was occuring in the art magazines and museums as well. And the galleries I wasn't that interested in probably wouldn't have shown me either. My style was too different from what they showed. So I basically stopped trying to show in galleries.

The only shows I have had in the last 20 years or so were at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education where I had two shows of my insect drawings. When I changed to naturalistic art five or six years ago I was too new to it to try to find a gallery to show it.

AND, there was the internet. I've had at least one site for at least five years, and have slowly added this blog, my primary online store, and have tested out the water at etsy, mainly for my more inexpensive prints.

About 10 days ago I read in the local paper about a juried show at a neighborhood art center less than a half mile from where I live. With some trepidation I applied and was accepted.

But why go back to galleries after 20 years without them? Well for one thing it involved little effort on my part. It really was just around the corner. For another I've always liked the idea of supporting 'local' businesses, whether food coops, local art centers, community supported agricultural or whatever. So much of the world seems to have lost the values of the neighborhood, though I have to add that I long ago abandoned my home neighborhood in Illinois and have spent a lot of time living in large cities. I'm sure that this skews my perspective a bit.

A third reason was that art really needs to be seen to be truly appreciated. That's one reason Albert Barnes didn't want color reproductions of his collection. Reproduction is always lacking but gives a false sense of being accurate. I've always been a big supporter of him and his vision of his art before the local courts dismantled it. In any case there is so much more to art when you see it in person. So all in all I just couldn't pass up the chance to perhaps show at the Manayunk Roxborough Art Center.

The photo at top shows two of my recent prints that were accepted, the multi-color reduction linocut of Wood Ducks along the Wissahickon, and the most recent linocut of the Lousiana Waterthrush and Ebony Jewelwing also seen along the Wissahickon. Since so many of the people who go to the gallery should be familiar with the Wissahickon I decided to submit these two prints.

Above my wife Jerene looks at part of the exhibit last Saturday. And below a shot of the outside sitting area and fountain.

The gallery at the Manayunk Roxborough Art Center is open on weekends from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. This show runs through July, 31. If you're in the neighborhood please stop by. And be sure to look for those Wissahickon prints.

Evolution of a Picture/Print

A few days ago I showed the initial stages of my print of the Louisiana Waterthrush and Ebony Jewelwing at the Wissahickon. At end of this post I'll show the finished print.

For now though I'd like to show what came before the initial stages of the print. That was of course the charcoal drawing that I also showed earlier. But it too had its own origins. Some of them are at top where I show two pages from different sketchbooks.

Both pages are all fieldsketches. The one on the left is over a year old. The main subject is a Red-bellied Woodpecker falling off a tree, along with a large piece of bark, done from memory. Obviously it happened too quickly for me to sketch it as it happened. There's also an overworked sketch of an Acadian Flycatcher. But I didn't even remember doing the dragonfly. Only the stigmas indicate to me that this is most likely another female Ebony Jewelwing.

The page on right is from a few weeks ago and shows a quick sketch of the Louisiana Waterthrush and the Bbony Jewelwing along with some poorly drawn other birds.

None of these are anything to write home about. But I think they show the value of a sketchbook in developing paintings and prints.

The quick watercolor above is also one that I posted here earlier. It's done using Caran d'Ache Neocolor II crayons and is based on the field sketch at top as well as my visual memory. As you can see there is more of a diagonal to the pose than in the fieldsketch. But that is how I remembered it. This waterthrush seems to always have his behind up in the air, pumping all the time. So I wanted to capture that and I think I did a better job here than in the original fieldsketch. I did see the same bird once or twice after the field sketch and he was again in the same pose.

What's interesting to me about this though is that I used this pose, as well as the made up rocks and water, which only approximate what I saw, as the basis for the charcoal drawing and finally the new print.

Some people may wonder why in the world I'm beating this waterthrush/damselfy/horse to death. Mainly because I loved reading about artistic process when I was young and still do.

The other reason is that I feel like I'm finally accomplishing what I set out to do when I started using birds as subjects in 2006: create ambitious works that included them as subjects. The combination of fieldwork, artistic creativity in designing the final composition, and then cutting the lino all add up, at least to me, to something that matches my ambition for what art should do. As an added benefit, and one I never had as an abstract artist, it allows me to portray the natural world that I love.

Above is the final edition. This is print number 4 of 10. There are also two artists proofs.

Jewelwing Just about Done

It was a beautiful morning for field sketching but late this afternoon I found some time to return to the Louisiana Waterthrush/Ebony Jewelwing linocut. Above is version 15. I'm nearing the end. Most likely a few more tweaks then on to an edition on good paper.

The current proofs are on cheap printer paper so the ink doesn't always look as good as it will on the final printmaking paper. I'm still deciding which paper to use for it.

Waterthrush Linocut - WIP

As threatened I began a new linoleum block print today based on the charcoal and pastel drawing of Louisiana Waterthrush and Ebony Jewelwing that I showed in last post. The photo above shows the block itself after printing the first six versions. It's sitting on a homemade bench hook with some of my carving tools next to it.

I decided some reader(s) might be interested in seeing much of the process involved so I decided to document it here. The first thing I did was to edit the last photo of the finished charcoal so that it was reversed horizontally. I need to do this because the lino prints in reverse. So I need to reverse my template if I want it to come out correctly. After that I crop the photo so that it is the same proportion as my linoleum block. The drawing and block were almost identical in proportion but not quite. After that I change the image size to the same size as the block and then I print it.

At that point it's time to tape the tracing paper to the linoleum block as above.

Then, as above, I tape the printed photo to the block, on top of the tracing paper.

Then I trace the lines of the major shapes in the photo.

So now it's finally time to carve. I like bold prints. But I start out very tentatively, making fairly faint lines. I do this because I can always carve deeper lines but I can never get back the linoleum once it's carved away.

It's no great surprise that the first print I pull is a disappointment, like the one above. But I'm prepared for this. It happens every time. I suppose it is a type of delayed gratification. I know that I need to be tentative to start and live with the disappointing prints.

By the time I get to version three, above, the print is starting to take shape. There is enough there for me to react to it and to make plans as to how to move on.

Version six, probably the last version for today, is above. It's organizing itself pretty well but I will still need to make some major decisions. How much black will I leave, how much white, how much of some in-between tone and just how will I achieve it using just black ink?

Stayed tuned.

Louisiana Waterthrush, Ebony Jewelwing at Wissahickon

I guess I'm all colored out. First the dull brown Common Nighthawk, now this black and white charcoal and pastel of a Louisiana Waterthrush and Ebony Jewelwing seen along the Wissahickon in Philadelphia recently.

Actually the motivation was more that I've been thinking about a new linocut and exploring various compositions. Though I have done multicolor reduction linocuts it's a whole lot easier to stick to just one color. Since I've seen both Louisiana Waterthrushes and Ebony Jewelwing damselflies at the same spot on the Wissahickon recently a composition featuring both of them has been knocking around in the back of my mind.

Rather than go directly to linoleum block with this I thought I'd enjoy trying it first in charcoal. This used to be my primary medium, both as an abstract artist and for awhile as a wildlife artist. So it seemed like it might be a good idea to return to it for awhile.

The only problem is that I've finally used up all of my erasers that were able to erase right through compressed charcoal back down to the white of the paper. And I haven't been able to find them anywhere. So here in order to get back some white I added white pastel. As you may notice it has a bluish cast that is different from the warm ivory of the paper. But that's the way it is. Artists are good at adapting.

Once you decide that you're going to use birds as a subject in art you have another important decision. What do you do with the background? This is something I've struggled with since I began. The main options seem to be: 1. standalone portrait, with no real background; 2. portrait with impressionistic background, just enough to indicate some sort of believable environment; 3. painterly style, where the brushwork unites the bird and background, but there is no recognizable natural background; 4. photorealist background where everything, bird and environment is done in detail like a photo; 5. naturalistic background, where the background is recongnizable but it doesn't at all look like a photo as in much 19th century wildlife art.

There are all sorts of variations on this. A great personal discovery for me was bird and flower painting. Not exactly realistic but certainly naturalistic this style also has the very appealing trait of combining bird and environment. I'm not claiming at all that this new charcoal is in that tradition. But I think it does share a kinship with it in placing importance on bird and environment.

In fact that's why I've often added butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies, as well as turtles to my bird paintings. They are often right there in the same environment. Including them is both true to nature and allows for a lot of compositional experimentation. I don't have the time to check right now but my recollection of Audubon is that this is also something that he often did.

For someone who knows nature I hope it adds to the enjoyment of the work. For someone who doesn't I hope that the compositional complexity adds to the enjoyment of the work. For me it does both.