Cape May Field Sketches - Part Six

Each time I post on this blog it seems like a longer time since the last post. In this case I've been holding off until I had a little more progress on my latest moku hanga print. But then a vacation to Cape May, NJ interfered with that plan.
When we got there I discovered that I'd forgotten my camera. Nothing could have been better for me. I'm never all that satisfied with photos anyway and the lack of camera forced me to spend much more time sketching.
So I'm adding another episode of field sketches from Cape May, this the longest yet. Below are pencil field sketches of various shorebirds.

Field  Sketch of American Oystercatcher on Nest at 'The Meadows'

Field Sketch of Dunlin and Short-billed Dowitcher at Heislerville WMA.

Field Sketch of  Semi-palmated Plover, Short-billed Dowitcher and Greater Yellowlegs at  Heislerville WMA.

Field Sketch of Willet at The Wetlands Institute.

Field Sketch of  Wilson's Snipe at 'The Meadows.'

Field  Sketch of Least Sandpipers  at 'The Meadows.'

Field Sketch of Least Sandpiper at  'The Meadows.'

Field Sketch of Ruddy Turnstone  and Greater Yellowlegs at Heislerville WMA.

Field Sketch of Semi-palmated Plover at Heislerville WMA.

Field Sketch of Short-billed Dowitcher at The Wetlands Institute.

Field Sketch of Mating Willets at Cooks Beach.

Field Sketch of Short-billed Dowitcher at Heislerville WMA.

Just to give a bit of a break to all these undifferentiated photos of drawings I'm continuing to divide by species, more or less. The following are pencil field sketches of gulls, terns, waterfowl and wading birds.

Field Sketch of Black Skimmer  at Heislerville WMA.

Field Sketch of Bonaparte's Gull and Lesser Black-backed Gull  at 'The Meadows.'

Field Sketch of Brant at The Wetlands Institute.

Field Sketch of Forsters Tern at The Wetlands Institute.

Field Sketch of  Glossy  Ibis  at Heislerville WMA.

Field  Sketch of  Immature Little Blue Heron at 'The Meadows.'

Field Sketch of Adult  Little Blue Heron at 'The Meadows.'

Field Sketch of Tri-colored Heron at The Wetlands Institute.

And finally some other birds, and of course the Diamondback Terrapin from The Wetlands Institute.

Field Sketch of Diamondback Terrapin Swimming in Tank at The Wetlands Institute.

Field Sketch of Eastern Meadowlark in Field on Sumner St.

Field Sketch of Marsh Wren at Jake's Landing.

Field Sketch  of Northern Parula at Cape May Point State Park.

Field Sketch of Osprey on Nest at Garrett Family Preserve.

Field Sketch of Prairie Warbler at Vine St. near Belleplain SF.

Field  Sketch of  Red-headed Woodpecker  at Garrett Family Preserve.

Field Sketch of Yellow-throated Warbler at Belleplain SF.

If you made it this far perhaps you like drawing or perhaps you like drawing of wildlife. I'm always torn between the desire to put down on paper what I see in the world in front of me and the creation of a work of art, something that can be related but that is often quite different. Now it's time to get back to creating a work of art in the form of a moku hanga print of an American Woodcock.

The Normally Distant Plover Walked Right in Front of Our Car

Black-bellied Plover at Heislerville WMA. Watercolor by Ken Januski.

We don't see that many Black-bellied Plovers. That is primarily because of where we live. They just don't appear in Philadelphia. Less than 100 miles away in Cape May, NJ it's another story. They're not uncommon. And the same is probably true for a number of other spots about that far away.

They are an attractive bird and I always hope to get a good look at them. But in my experience, limited though it is, they tend to be the most distant shorebird when a group are congregated together, in deeper water and further back than any other species. So when we spied one from inside the car at Heislerville WMA in New Jersey last May it was even more surprising to find it so close. Perhaps the car served as a blind and we weren't noticed by the bird? I'm not really sure. But I took advantage of the situation and took numerous photos. Since we were on vacation and still hadn't reached our destination all my sketching gear was packed away. But I was able to get out the camera and take some photos.

So this approximately 9x12 inch watercolor was done yesterday. I often find that after a lengthy print, even one that I end up being happy with, that I want to take a break from printmaking, especially if it was a developed or ambitious print. As with cooking and eating, exercise programs or a million other things a change is often welcome. Variety is the spice of life.

I recently organized my old watercolors and it is truly shocking how bad my first ones, from about 2006, are! By comparison the watercolor above is a masterpiece. But of course my ambitions have grown over 10 years. What would have more than satisfied me 10 years ago no longer does. And yet I am happy with this. It captures the bird I think and yet also doesn't look too fussy. Watercolor is a truly wonderful medium, or at least it can be, and very rarely I feel that I'm starting to use it the way it should be used.

A convoluted series of circumstances recently reminded me of my background in art, especially my artistic training. It is strictly as a 'modern' artist, in the tradition of Degas, the Impressionists, the Post-Impressionists, Picasso, Matisse, American Modernists like Stuart Davis, Abstract Expressionism, the Bay Area Expressionists like Elmer Bischoff and Richard Diebenkorn and many, many, many others. One of the more or less common themes in this tradition is the unimportance of subject matter. If there's a recognizable subject then most likely it takes away from the quality and seriousness of the art. That's not my current thought but I'd say it was pretty much the unspoken and sometimes spoken theme underlying almost my entire artistic education. And it made perfect sense to me. Art should be about self-expression and not be limited by subject matter.

Of course this is a massive subject and I'm not going to pursue it. All I want to say is that it was my artistic training. When I started using insects and then birds as subjects I went against that theme and found it somewhat liberating. You can be just as expressive with subject matter as without and sometimes the limitations of subject matter can lead you to more accomplished art. Constraints lead to creativity. The total lack of constraints for most people leads to entropy and chaos. In any case I just found it interesting to think about my artistic background and my current art, where subject really is important, and yet it is always sublimated to expression itself. For me it is a good place to be.

That Heronry - Step by Step

Yesterday I finally settled down and got to work on a finished watercolor of the heronry on good watercolor paper. For some reason I just wanted to get some version of it done in paint.

The problem with heronries is that they are large. You can capture some sense of all the trees or you can capture an individual bird or two. But it's very difficult to capture both. After all the preliminary studies of last 7-10 days this seemed like the best way to get both birds and trees.

The painting at top is the finished version, an 11x14 inch watercolor. I'm including some of the steps along the way below.



I did a sketch first on same size paper to make sure I had the proportions more or less correct. Then I drew the sketch above on the good paper. I often skip sketches but this time I didn't because I wanted to make sure I had planned out where the birds would go, especially since I needed to preserve white of paper for them. One problem with this however is that the lead of the pencil itself can dirty the paper.



Then I got to the first problem. Where should I start? I knew I had a number of possible problems: 1) how to show the individual reed stalks, especially since they were very light in value; 2) how to show the pine needles at right, near the Black-crowned Night Heron; 3) how to blend in the dark areas in shadow. When I know I have such problems I just sort of feel my way along. So in the painting above I painted the pine needles, some of the reeds and some of the shadow.



I then added more dark shadows as well as the dark part of the trees. I knew that this would be a problem though. There were light reeds going on front of some of the dark trees. How could I accomplish this in transparent watercolor. The reeds would never look light on top of the dark of the trees. I've never used masking fluid and that might have worked but it's always seemed far too finicky for me. Still if I had some I might have tried it but I didn't. So I just put the dark down and figured that the solution would eventually appear.



Next I added some of the green foliage at top as well as the light reeds in center. I knew that using yellow for reeds would not really accurately portray what I saw. They were actually much lighter and tanner in reality. But I couldn't figure out how to get that in watercolor.



And some more finetuning to try it all together. At this point the one big question loomed: should I try to make the reeds lighter by adding white gouache. And if I did that should I add it in other places as well to try to get a few more white highlights. Finally I decided to do so. I then went over some of the gouache with transparent yellows to try go get a more realistic portrayal of the reeds.

This is shown at top in the final version. I also did something I didn't really intend to. I made the water darker and with stronger reflections than I planned. Once I made a small change I saw that I needed to make another small change, etc., etc. I think it works like this. But it was a surprise that just took over the painting at the end.

For me that's just the way art works...

Such a Lot of Junk

Ah, you thought I was talking about some current art show weren't you, one that relies all on words, but has nothing for the eyes, or maybe even the soul? Or maybe I've just been wondering why I pay for cable TV?

No, this junk I didn't even know existed until I took a look at a photo I'd taken of Semipalmated Plovers at Heislerville WMA last month. I'd also done some field sketches and thought I might use both to come up with ideas for a more developed sketch. But imagine my surprise when I noticed that the camouflage-like background of the birds was primarily muddy, broken bottles.

Such a juxtaposition of beauty and ugliness. So yesterday I did a quick pen sketch to which I added watercolor. It did get the sense of camouflage but the birds were largely lost. Still it seemed like it could make a good painting.

So today I decided I needed to do some studies of the birds. Thus this 15-minute watercolor sketch of one of them.

I'm happy with it, though less happy with yesterday's quick sketch. I hope eventually to do a more finished watercolor of this theme that incorporates the beauty of the birds, the sense of camouflage and the surprise of the muddy bottles.

We shall see.

Sketching the Natural Wealth of Cape May - Part Two and a Half

I never finished putting up the fieldsketches from our recent trip to Cape May. After the first batch I got distracted with new works and new birds seen in Philadelphia. So here's the remaining group. The sketch above is of a group of Short-billed dowitchers trying to find places to perch on a small fallen tree at Heislerville WMA near Cape May, NJ. I think part of the fun of fieldsketching is capturing real life moments like these.





Following up on the shorebird theme the two drawings above include another Oystercatcher as well as a Green Heron, and a page of Black-bellied Plovers along with a Semi-palmated Sandpiper, and a Laughing Gull. We did go to Reed's Beach by the way to see if any Red Knots had arrived yet. Nope, just hundreds of these raucous Laughing Gulls. Our single Red Knot was seen at Heislerville.







Next we have Glossy Ibises. They were everywhere. In the sky they just look like dark birds. Up close as many of these were they are wonders of iridescent colors, somewhat like the green and maroon of Green Herons, but toned down about 6 notches, to where they are very dark.

The top drawing shows a Glossy Ibis in an awkward but striking pose preening itself. Above it is an Eastern Willet. The middle drawing includes another ibis as well as many Purple Martins at the house at Cape May Point State Park and a Piping Plover on nest. The bottom drawing includes one more ibis as well as another Laughing Gull, rabbit and Osprey.



Finally two drawings of an immature Bald Eagle seen at Heislerville and one almost indecipherable Osprey, most likely also seen there.

Finally I should say that these are all done with a Faber-Castel 'Pitt Artist Pen.' I've had these pens for a long time but only recently started using them for fieldsketches. I think the fact that you have to live with what you put down and not worry about erasing makes for both more sketches and more spontaneous sketches.

Sketching the Natural Wealth of Cape May - Part Two

About six months ago I published a post called 'Sketching the Natural Wealth of Cape May.' It was a celebration of both the bird diversity of the Cape May, NJ area and of the value and excitement of fieldsketching.

Well it's time for part two of a probably recurring theme. We spent the last week in the Cape May area, seeing over 100 species while we were there. They include shorebirds, warblers, raptors and others. The sketch above was based on tens and tens of Semi-palmated Plovers sitting before us at Heislerville WMA. Though a single bird might have been more artistically successful there were many birds and I wanted to show that.




We also saw many Short-billed Dowitchers, both at Heislerville and elsewhere. They're at the bottom of the page above. At top right is a brief sketch of a Prairie Warbler. The wood warblers are among the most beautiful birds that visit or breed in the U.S. so we always love to see them. But they flit actively about constantly in search of food. Though this was probably the most good looks at a Prairie Warbler that I've ever had this still was the best I could come up with. So as you can see there is still a lot of room for improvement. Many people know how hard it is to even see wood warblers, let alone photograph them. I think most people who know this, as one person said who was watching me try to sketch them, realize that actually sketching them is like some sort of extreme art sport. But it's not just a sport. It's an interaction with a living creature. You can't fake it. Either it works or it doesn't but often the thrill of even trying shows in the drawing.




There is a movement in food called 'Slow Food', and I've heard of such things as 'Slow Art.' I haven't actively investigated their meaning but I think that they are a reaction to a non-stop world and a realization of the pleasure that is lost in not taking time to enjoy things, whether food, art or something else. The same can be said of birding. We're slow birders. So we don't get alerts on our cell phones about the newest rare bird 25 miles away. But we do almost always end up with memorable experiences with certain birds, and perhaps other animals, on our vacations. Last year it was the Piping Plovers at Cape May. This year among other things it was American Oystercatchers. For three or four days they were at the same place at 'The Meadows' and allowed a very close approach. Above are two of the better drawings I did of them.



Another benefit of sketching the birds that you see is that you look at them more closely than you would if you were just trying to identify them or photograph them. I think the reason for this is that in IDing a bird you just need to see enough characteristics for your brain to decide on the ID. This is of course a complex and enjoyable process. It's part of the reason I think that many people love birding. But to draw a bird you need to know more than just some charateristics, or field marks. You need an exact pattern so that you can copy the entire bird.

Getting an exact pattern is almost impossible though. Almost no birds sit still for you. So you need to look extremely intensely trying to grasp the most important features so that you can get them down on paper. The top and bottom drawings are me trying to draw a Least Sandpiper and also making sure that is isn't the very similar Semi-palmated Sandpiper. One clue is a downcurved bill. That was obvious on the birds I saw and I was trying to capture it here. Unfortunately due to foreshortening it's not very legible on the bottom drawing on the page above. In between is a quick sketch of a Whimbrel.



Along the same lines the last page above includes numerous shorebirds, starting off with the very small Semi-palmated Sandpiper and ending with the large Black Skimmers. The small size of the Semi-palmated was made all the more evident to us by some bird-banders at Heislerville. One researcher held the bird in his hand while he banded it and we saw how truly small the bird actually is. It was an amazing experience. In between, going to larger and larger sizes are a Dunlin and another Short-billed Dowitcher.

These are less than half of the drawings that I did. Over the next few days I'll show the rest.

Watercolor Pencil Experiments Continued

There were a couple of things that bothered me about yesteday's watercolor pencil experiment with this Greater Yellowlegs. First the bird had too much of a reddish cast; second, the water looked too splotchy and colorless; third, the foreground was pretty undefined and lacking in color.

Normally I'd just go back into them while the painting was still wet and make a grand mess of things. This time I was more patient and waited for the paper to be completely dry before going back into it with the watercolor pencils. I have managed to get the colors of the yellowlegs a little closer to true. But I'm not really happy with either the water or the foreground. I can't say that layering on new colors has worked very well. But it may be more difficult with such a large undifferentiated space as still water. So I'm going to continue to experiment with layering of washes. I do think that eventually I'll find the way to use watercolor pencils to their best advantage. Patience, patience, patience!!