Raptors Overhead, Watercolor Off the Easel

Adult and Two Juvenile Great-crested Flycatchesrs. Watercolor and Sumi Brush Pen Painting by Ken Januski.
 

I think I mentioned recently that I've been hoping to do some more developed work for an international competition whose deadline is fast approaching. After all those sumi brush pen sketches I finally bit the bullet and started work on the 16x20 inch watercolor and sumi brush pen painting above. I've wanted to make a painting of a scene similar to this for the last 18 months or so ever since I saw one or two adult and two juvenile Great-crested Flycatchers all together at Morris Arboretum last spring. This is based on various photos from that day. We've seen another 3-4 Great-crested at the same location over the last few weeks so maybe that is what spurred me on to this subject.

I still have a bit of time before the competition so there may still be one more painting using this medium in the near future. In the past I've entered this competition twice and had my linocuts accepted twice. But I lost money on all the various costs involved. Even if I'd sold I would have lost money because prints are almost by definition less expensive than paintings. So this year I've decided to enter some paintings and perhaps a couple of woodcuts. We shall see.

Peregrine Falcon Flying Over Backyard. Photo by Ken Januski.

It was after a 12 hour day exhibiting at the Manayunk Arts Festival in 2012 that I hiked up hill to our house. As soon as I got a block away from Main St. and the festival I heard a shrill cry. When I looked up I saw at least one and maybe more raptors. Almost immediately I realized that they must be part of the peregrine family from the nearby church steeple. That was in fact the case and just a half block away were birders keeping track of the adults and the newly fledged young. Later that summer we often heard the same shrill cries overhead in our backyard and saw up to three peregrines at the same time flying high overhead.

We heard and saw them again in the summer of 2013 then not at all in 2014, though they had again bred at the church. They bred again this year, though I never saw them in my few trips to the church. But just this week Jerene heard their cries again. She heard and saw them briefly on Tuesday and Wednesday. So yesterday I sat out in the back with camera binoculars hoping to do the same. No luck. Then at the same time today we heard then saw two of them. I was ready with binoculars and camera but almost immediately they flew into the sun and were gone. I was only able to get the one grainy photo above, most likely a juvenile.

It's amazing to me to know that they breed near here. It's almost more amazing to see some, and I assume that they're the same ones, flying over our backyard!!

Osprey Flying Over Manayunk Canal. Photo by Ken Januski.

Not quite as surprising but just as welcome a sight was this Osprey seen about a half mile downhill along the Manayunk Canal yesterday.

Two Juvenile Killdeer at Manayunk Canal. Photo by Ken Januski.

This time of year can also bring shorebirds and sometimes Night Herons to the canal so I've been looking recently. I've often suspected that Killdeer breed there. Yesterday that was confirmed when I saw these two very young Killdeer with one of their parents at the canal. They always look like a ping pong ball on stilts. I did a couple of not quite successful sumi field sketches which I'm not going to show here. But I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually appear in a print or painting.

July is often considered a dull time for birding. But that certainly has not been my experience.

Some More Sumi Brush Pen Sketches

Hermit Thrush. Sumi Brush Pen Sketches by Ken Januski.

Many years ago I used to do three hours of figure drawing five nights a week in San Francisco, this immediately after leaving my full-time job. I ate supper when I got home at 9-10 pm with a stop in between for an espresso or cappuccino at one of San Francisco's many coffee houses.

It wasn't the healthiest life style but it was exciting, especially as I did almost all of my life drawings using felt tip pens, or reed pens dipped in ink on paper about 18x24 inches. In other words I did many quick, large sketches night after night. There was something both mesmerizing and fulfilling about working so quickly and at such a relatively large scale.

I'm including three new sheets of Kuratake Sumi Brush Pen sketches. They are also very quickly done. That it just inevitable with the drawing tool. If you don't move it quickly you get a blob. I suppose it is possible to contemplate your stroke for awhile before you actually put it down. This in fact might be the best way to use the brush pen. But for now I'm doing these quickly. Each time I put down one stroke I quickly move to the next stroke.

These are done in an 11x14 Cachet sketchbook so they are somewhat large. I think it is the quick fluidity of the brush pen rather than the size of the paper that is the main factor in the effect created. And it thoroughly reminds me of the excitement of those figure drawing classes.

Great Egrets. Sumi Brush Pen Sketches by Ken Januski.

As I've mentioned, ad nauseum I'm sure, I'm not at all interested in detail. I want to scream when I read compliments on 'the detail' in someone's work. For me the telling detail is important, the one that through suggestion indicates both a knowledge and a feel for the bird, or any other object for that matte, but that is quite different than millions of little details that work against one another so that there is no focus in the work.

This brush pen, or just a regular sumi brush, forces you I think to go for overall impression and just one or two details. That's the goal I seek and I think working with the sumi brush pen will be very helpful along those lines. Eventually I'm sure at least some of these sumi sketches will appear in a new woodcut or linocut.

Great-crested Flycatcher. Sumi Brush Pen Sketches by Ken Januski.

Oh yes, these are all done from the many photos I've taken over the years. If the rain, and hot weather, ever stops I plan to try the pen drawing from life.

Cezanne and Young Birds

Great-crested Flycatcher Fledglings. Watercolor Sketch by Ken Januski.

You understand Cezanne didn't know what he was doing. He didn't know how to finish his pictures. Renoir and Monet, they knew their craft as painters...
Cezanne's wife speaking to Matisse after Cezanne's death as quoted in Cezanne by John Rewald.

You'll be captivated by his deliberate and compact arrangements, the richness and novelty of his paintings........
From a brochure from the Barnes Foundation advertising The World is an Apple: The Still Life of Paul Cezanne.

Poor Cezanne. I might also have titled this post Cezanne: Eternally Misunderstood, and Undervalued. I've been itching to write about him but remembered his own comment about a contemporary artist he thought would be far more successful as an artist if he spent more time painting and less time studying other artists. Sound advice! It is all too easy to get distracted from art itself.

So I was planning to pursue my art work and not write about him and the marvelous book I just finished reading, based mainly on his writings and those of his contemporaries, by John Rewald. As I thought about what I'd want to write about these young Great-crested Flycatchers seen at Morris Arboretum in Philadelphia today however I thought about how common they are, at least for avid birdwatchers.

Beautiful though they are many birders don't go looking for them or quite a few other striking breeding birds at this time of year. The birds are too predictable I guess. Nothing new to check off the list. Nothing exotic. Cezanne exemplified the opposite of this. He painted the same themes around Aix in France over and over. As he said just shifting his view a bit presented an entirely new opportunity to paint. He didn't need the exotic.

That's the way birds are I think, if you'll just consider them in their environment. They present endless possibilities, a phrase that generally makes me cringe because I know most of the time it means the opposite. Cezanne though shows how monumental art can be made from the most common subjects.

Because Cezanne was so workmanlike in his methods, so devoted to painting and yet also so self-doubting it's sad to see that even his wife, though they weren't at all close, didn't see his value as an artist. And the Barnes Foundation shows itself not to be all that much better when it commends the novelty of his paintings. The last thing in the world that Cezanne wanted to be was novel. I can't believe their copywriters could actually write that and that they'd let it go to press. But in an age where advertising is more important than anything and truth less important than just about anything then I guess it's no surprise.

Still it was shocking to read, and has more or less prevented me from responding to their letter asking me to join. Sometimes you just have to stand for something, just as Cezanne did. It's difficult to think about joining an institution that holds so many Cezannes and yet seems to show such little appreciation for them.

In any case I'd like to say I show some sign of imitating Cezanne in the quick watercolor sketch above. I don't at all. I had to think of this when I read that sometimes he'd spend a year on a painting. This was done in 90 minutes. But there is at least the vague similarity of knowing that all of nature can be a never ending source of inspiration.

For all this though I haven't mentioned what I think is the greatest insult to Cezanne, that he is progenitor of abstraction and modern art. In one sense, the liberation of color, I think he was. Perhaps also in that his paintings often seem flatter than paintings that came before him.But he always used color to try to portray his sensation in front of nature. Modern art, of which I've been a long time practitioner, seems to like to forget about the nature part of the equation. He never intended, nor I think encouraged anyone, to break away completely from nature. He just sought to portray it in the way he experienced it.

Don't Fiddle Now!

It may be a little too early for Fiddlehead Ferns. But it's never time to fiddle with your artwork. It's always been true for me, and I'd guess for most people, that finishing a painting or drawing is always the hardest part. Rather than face the problems head on, assuming that you can even see what they are, artists of all sorts tend to fiddle. Put a little dab there, a little dab here, oh I messed that up better just erase what I just did, oops now look what I've done I've really messed this up, etc., etc. The other problem is stopping too quickly, never pushing yourself to be a bit more ambitious.

In any case all of those thoughts came into play with this pastel. I've spent a fair amount of time on it this morning but fear doing anything more. I think it's improved and has that sense of a bright beautiful bird on a bright beautiful morning, up in the trees, just like he always is.

Great-crested Pastel

I haven't had any time to do any artwork over the last week. But I did have an interesting week reading the first two books published on artist Robert Bateman. I've never looked at him closely, but what I have seen I haven't liked much. I know that this is probably considered sacrilege in wildlife art circles.

But I have to say that I'm glad I read the two books. I have a new appreciation for him. That appreciation had begun with an essay by him on the Wildlife Art Journal (the site is a pay site but some samples are available for free). The essay is called, as I recall, something like 'Why I Am a 21st-century Conservative.' I found myself thoroughly in agreement with him in terms of how neo-conservatives have absolutely corrupted the notion of 'conservation', natural, social and cultural. I was so impressed by it that I wanted to give him another look.

It has been a pleasure. For one thing the reproductions are richer than those I'd seen elsewhere. In particular the color is much richer. And the design stands out more. Also Bateman talks about how he's not happy when people praise his skill in portraying detail. That's not really all that important to him. This was a surprise because if I'd had to sum up his work previous to reading these books I would have said: too much detail, rendered in too-muted colors. So it was a pleasant surprise to see that though he does care about detail that is only part of his motivation.

I don't want to go on anymore about him here. Perhaps in another post. In any case seeing how important design was to him reminded me of my Great-crested Flycatcher still on the back burner, waiting for a more developed rendering than my last quick watercolor.

I've had these photos for a couple of years and just couldn't figure out how to do a painting or drawing based on them. Today I did a few more design experiments in color and then finally went with something fairly similar to what I used a couple of weeks ago. It is amazing to me how much time I spent on trying to figure out a design that I liked. This was the only one that showed promise.

There is definitely more work to do here. But it's off to a solid start. I suppose I could still ruin it. But since I haven't posted anything in awhile I wanted to post it, half-done though it is.

Great-crested Morning

Though I did these sketches of a Great-crested Flycatcher late yesterday afternoon they seem more appropriate for a bright morning as it is right now in Philadelphia. We often see them, as we did this bird, in the early morning at Shenandoah National Park in spring. Their pale lemon breast is an early-morning color, like sun filtered through early morning fog and mist.

All in all I think their colors may be the most elegant of all the birds in eastern America, or at least the Northeast. There is the pale lemon yellow breast, the steel blue face, the brownish back and wings and then, to cap it off, the mahogany-cinammon tail. A masterpiece of understated coloristic elegance.

And one day they'll appear again. Both morning and late afternoon light seem stronger, like spring is actually on its way.

Though I love this flycatcher I've never painted or drawn one. The main reason is that I've just never been able to see enough details in my photos and I don't want a vague generalization. So yesterday I decided to at least make drawings from the photos I had. This bird sat outside our cabin in Shenandoah last spring, just long enough for me to get some photos. My thought was that if I drew at least what I had that eventually I'd get a better idea of the structure of this bird, then maybe use that as the basis for a painting or maybe charcoal drawing.

It hasn't just yet. But it might. I enjoyed drawing the various postures of this beautiful bird. I rarely draw a bird just to draw a bird. Most often there's something of the bird that I want to capture in paint, charcoal, pencil or pastel. I've always wanted to capture the colors of the Great-crested Flycatcher. Now I have some interesting postures as well. Those two may just be the needed impetus.

Well I guess that they were an impetus. After I posted this I decided to do some watercolor studies to see if they might form the basis of a painting or pastel. The watercolor at the top is the first study.

Am I Beautiful, or What?!

Stub-tailed, long-beaked, knob-kneed! Not the phrases that first spring to mind when discussing beauty. But that is a good description of a Green Heron, and he is beautiful!

Of course the maroon and dark green colors of much of the upper bird helps, as does the rich brown streaking on neck. This one was particularly striking due to the bold zigzag pattern on the wings, seen in the second photo. This is the fresh plumage of a first year bird. He'll keep it until next summer. I'm surprised we've never seen this before but we've rarely been so close to one either. I wonder if his seeming tameness also is related to his age. Or perhaps he was a migrant and too hungry to worry about nearby humans.

We saw him on a 4-hour walk at Tinicum(John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge) today on a beautiful, sunny, breezy 80 day. I'd say he was the high point along with a couple of Marsh Wrens, two Great-Crested Flycatchers and one Willow Flycatcher.

I did have my watercolor field box with me but it seemed better today to stick with the pencil sketches above and the photos. i also wanted to share the scope with my wife so that gave me less time to draw, or paint, with it. Still I certainly wish I'd had time to try some watercolor field sketches of this very handsome bird. I expect you will be seeing some watercolors, and maybe pastels, of him in the future. He is just too striking not to be the subject of more developed artwork.