Leaping Into and Perhaps Beyond Cliche

Female Black-throated Blue Warbler Feeding on Devil's Walkingstick. Original Moku Hang by Ken Januski. Copyright 2020

Leaping Female Black-throated Blue Warbler. Pencil sketch by Ken Januski. Copyright 2020

With so many years of abstract painting behind me I found that I had a lot of artistic tools that also served me well when I started using subjects from nature. I didn't understand the structure of much of  what I saw in nature. So I had a lot to learn about birds and insects, not to mention mammals, vegetation, etc. But there was one thing in naturalistic art, though also in the figure drawing that I spent a number of early years doing, that really wasn't in my abstract art. In fact off the top of my head I don't think  it's in most abstract art. That is movement and/or weight.

I did a lot of figure drawing in my distant past, about 3 hours a night, 3-4 days a week for a year or more, followed by additional classes in graduate school that often included figure drawing.  I loved figure drawing, though I particularly loved quicker poses. I'm not sure how fond I would have been of  1 hour plus poses. What I loved was trying to capture both movement AND a sense of weight and how it was distributed. No I don't mean how heavy a model might be. I mean an almost physical empathetic  knowledge of whether there is a lot of weight on one leg, very little on another, a great stretch in one area of the body, perhaps with a contraction in another part of the body, etc., etc. I don't think this can be easily explained. You either look at a drawing and get that feeling of where the weight and movement is, or you don't, assuming of course that the artist captured it. Most of all I think it is a matter of physical empathy.

I've noticed this in the drawing  of others, and also sculpture where it seems even more noticeable,  with various subjects, people, horses, hippos, birds, etc. But with birds in particular there is one new element: loft, that physical sense of weight that you can sometimes see and feel when something is moving above the earth, sometimes 100s of feet, sometimes just a few feet as in the female Black-throated Blue Warbler above.

I was reminded a bit of this when I watched part of a  so-so show on Rembrandt on tv last night. One early painting showed a hand that seemed to be lying lightly  on whatever. But there was a definite sense of lightness. It wasn't a dead lobster, heavy as could be. It had the sensation of  lightness. This in turn reminded me of seeing something similar in a hand by Giotto, probably a Madonna and child, seen  at the Uffizi in Florence many years ago. Some of the best artists capture the  weight of  limbs as they portray them. Sometimes they are light but  other times you get the  sense of  real weight bearing down into the ground.

Of course with birds the sense of weight is just different, at least if they're in flight. I have to confess that  I've never flown, at least under my own power. Neither has any human as far as I know. And yet I think we can still feel  the sense of soaring in a soaring hawk. Though humans have no real experience of flying or floating many can still 'feel' what it is like.

I know artists who can capture the sense of flight in birds while drawing them from life. I can't  do that. Perhaps I could  if  I tried harder and had more experience with seeing birds in flight, particularly soaring raptors. But  if  pressed I think I could do a sketch with some  sense of  reality.

That is not the case with birds that leap into the air, mainly to pick off something  to eat. This is a much less seen phenomenon than birds soaring. If it were much more common perhaps I would even try it from life. But the fact is often I don't even know it is happening. I only realize it because I take photos and some of them show the movement. So for instance with this female Black-throated Blue Warbler feeding on the berries of Devil's Walkingstick I really couldn't see what she was doing, even when looking throughout my  high quality binoculars. Only the photos I took showed it.

So I'm faced with a dilemma. Do I want to paint or  print a subject that requires photos? I really don't like art that shows a heavy reliance on photos. I'll admit that this could just be a matter of taste, which can be very personal and change from person to person. Nonetheless I really don't like such art. Too many well delineated ripples in water will drive me screaming from the room! Most often they can only be done by using photos. Humans don't see that way.

So deciding to use a photo of a bird leaping up into the air was hard for me. Not only will any art I do based on it look like it came from  a photo but it might also look quite cliched: Bird In Flight. Nonetheless I decided to go ahead and use this as a subject. I did so because I think it's fascinating to see birds in flight. And I wanted to try to  capture it.

As I was working on some of my recent acrylic paintings I kept noticing the sketch I'd done weeks previously of the Black-throated Blue. I guess you could say it just kept calling to me. Finally I decided to return to moku hanga using it as a subject. At top you see the finished result. There are two slightly different versions, one in a  edition of 9, and the one pictured here in an edition of 8.

 

Spring Flight

Common Green Darners, Tree Swallow, Pied-billed Grebe and Canada Goose on Nest. Pencil and Crayon Sketch by Ken Januski.

One of the great thrills of spring is the exuberant flight, or at least it looks exuberant to me, of birds and insects. Tree Swallows are always among the most impressive and such a welcome change from the slow pace of winter. Yesterday they were joined by the first dragonflies of the year, Common Green Darners, as well as soaring Red-tailed Hawks. I couldn't find a place for the hawks here but I did manage to combine the Tree Swallows and Common Green Darner. Typical of this time as well, particularly in the wetlands of Morris Arboretum, are nesting Canada Geese. Much rarer and in fact yesterday was the first time we've seen them there were Pied-billed Grebes, in migration I'm sure.

I think because this is such an exciting time I'd like to use a medium that matches the excitement and exuberance. Over the years I've found that pencil and water soluble crayons, which are capable of also being used as a wash, work very well. As in the last post this is done with Caran d'Ache Neocolor II crayons..

Flight

Gray Catbird with Walnuts Version I. Multi-block Woodcut by Ken Januski.

Gray Catbird with Walnuts Version II. Multi-block Woodcut by Ken Januski.

I really wasn't sure how I'd name the post with the final edition(s) of the Gray Catbird with Walnuts woodcut. But the excitement of seeing birds, especially hawks, in flight today at Houston Meadows provided the answer: Flight.

I'm sure that there are many people who first get interested in birds through an admiration, perhaps even envy, of their ability to fly. I've never been one of those for better or worse, perhaps because I just have never seen all that many hawks in flight. But when you do see them soaring, like the juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk shown below, it is quite a sight. The sense of elegance, excitement, power is quite striking.

So I determined that I'd call the post Flight. I suppose it's a good thing that I'm happy with the woodcuts. Otherwise I might have needed to try something like Dive. But I am happy with the results so the title stays.

Juvenile Red-shouldered Hawk at Houston Meadows. Photo by Ken Januski.

As I said previously I printed on two types of paper, partially because I had a half sheet of Rives Heavyweight to use up. Once I started experimenting with the background color I decided it made sense to make the 12 prints on Shin Torinoko paper one color, yellow, and the 6 prints on Rives Heavyweight another, sort of gray olive. I've always preferred the yellow one but there's also something that I like about the more subdued olive gray print. Both images are 4x6 inches and the entire print is 7x9 inches.

They are now up for sale on my Etsy site(see link at right). I've also added some photos and an explanation of the process involved on my Facebook site(also in link at right).