An Artistic Team of Rivals

White-throated Sparrow in Staghorn Sumac. Sumi Brush Pen Sketch by Ken Januski.

 

When the flush of newborn sun fell first
On Eden's green and bold
Our Father Adam sat under a tree
And scratched with a stick in the mould
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen
Was a joy to his mighty Heart
Till the devil whispered behind the leaves,
"It's pretty but is it Art?"

From 'The Conundrum of Workshops' by Rudyard Kipling, quoted in 'Lines from Nature' by John Busby, Langford Press.

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'"I have attained," he said, "a form filtered to the essentials."'

Henri Matisse speaking about his later cutout artwork, as quoted by John Elderfield in 'The Cutouts of Henri Matisse', George Braziller.

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Every animal, plant, or fish exhibits individual moods compatible with its nature. It is difficult to understand, but once understood their spirit expressed in your painting will be complete -- otherwise you are painting mere likeness. Few artists can express their subjects spirit -- the first rule for this is universal empathy. As you progress in this, not only will you understand the spirit behind the few animal motifs on which you are studying, but every creature will begin to be enlivened with mood and spirit. Later, when you meld the myriad creatures together with your emotions and nature through your brush you attain a 'dissolution of opposites,' a realm where both subject and object are transformed together. Every scene that passes your vision and leaves your brush becomes enlivened with your individual personality. The average person may not recognize this, but other artists will acknowledge your paintings as possessing both feeling and character. At this point painting becomes an art of life, perfected by transforming your disposition. Neglecting to mold your nature inhibits you from attaining a higher realm of painting. This is why abstract art has become an art for this modern, chaotic age.

Cheng Man-ching: Master of Five Excellences, translation and commentary by Mark Hennessy, Frog Ltd.
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I recently received the last book by John Busby , 'Lines from Nature' and was struck by the opening quote from Kipling. And I'm not sure exactly what Busby meant since his own work exhibits both direct observation of nature and art based on that as well as more formal aspects. Perhaps he just wanted to show that it is an age-old dichotomy.

Seeing a wonderful film recently called 'A Model for Matisse' about a nun who was a subject for many works by Matisse and was also instrumental in his late works for the chapel at Vence, renewed my appreciation for Matisse. There's no question that his work is ART.

Thus a dilemma: straightforward response to nature, which may or may not be ART, and ART that intends to be ART. I love them both.

So that got me searching through 'Cheng Man-ching: Master of Five Excellences', translated with commentary by Mark Hennessy for some of his thoughts on art. The one I quote is not actually the one I was looking for, about chi in art, but it's good enough and I'm not trying to write a research paper.

My point is really to show how many different attitudes there can be toward making art, and how one person, namely me, but I suspect most other artists as well, are influenced by many of them, even when they can seem contradictory. And out of all those contradictions comes ART. And I think the best art comes from an artistic team of rivals, not from just one source or one school. As I've been noticing so much recently while listening to Beethoven it is out of conflict that the most bracing, striking and honest beauty sometimes comes.

Since this really is more about ideas than pictures it was hard to know how to illustrate this. So I chose the only art I've made in 2017. This is a fairly quick sketch with a sumi brush pen of a White-throated Sparrow eating the seeds of a Staghorn Sumac. Perhaps it will eventually become a print, or painting, or perhaps even a cutout.

More Brush Paintings and Philadelphia Mid-winter Bird Census

Common Mergansers on Schuylkill River. Chinese Brush Painting by Ken Januski.

Pileated Woodpecker and Northern Flicker Eating Poison Ivy Berries. Sumi Brush Pen Sketch by Ken Januski.

Last Saturday was the annual Philadelphia Mid-winter Bird Census and we took part once again. Unseasonably warm weather, and a totally overcast day, made for an odd count. Outside of seeing and hearing a Common Raven flying over the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education we didn't see much unusual and to some extent we didn't even see the usual.

But we did see our first Common Mergansers of the year, pictured above riding the waves of the Schuylkill River. We also saw four species of woodpecker eating poison ivy berries from the same tree, around which the poison ivy had wound itself.

I'm still stuck on Chinese brush painting, not a bad thing to get stuck on, but something that I don't want to make a lifelong detour from my other work. But for now my idiosyncratic, and some might just say bad, combination of western style and Chinese brush painting style seems a useful and informative way to make pictures. My hope is that eventually what I've learned from brush painting will manifest itself both in my prints and in my watercolors. And hopefully I'll get better at it in itself, though given that you could spend your life studying it I don't have high expectations.

The mergansers are painted with ink made from an ink stick and water, which allows me a variation of blacks and grays. I used a small Chinese calligraphy brush and a larger sumi brush for it. The Pileated Woodpecker and Northern Flicker was painted with a Kuretake Sumi Brush Pen. The virtue of it is that the ink is carried in a reservoir, like a fountain pen, but it cannot easily create more than one color, a deep black.

2016 - Year of the Raptor

Bald Eagle at Dixon Meadow Preserve. Chinese Brush Painting by Ken Januski.

Northern Harrier at Dixon Meadow Preserve. Sumi Brush Pen Painting by Ken Januski.

Well at least it seems like the Year of the Raptor, based on the birds we've seen in 2016: a Bald Eagle at Andorra Natural Area and Dixon Meadow Preserve, probably the same bird; a Northern Harrier twice at Dixon Meadow Preserve; two American Kestrels at Dixon Meadow Preserve; and an accipiter(either Sharp-shinned or Coopers Hawk) in our backyard over the last two days.

American Kestrel at Dixon Meadow Preserve, Chinese Brush Painting by Ken Januski.

Bald Eagle at Dixon Meadow Preserve. Chinese Brush Painting by Ken Januski.

I hesitate to talk about Oriental brush painting, Chinese brush painting or sumi-e, since I know so little about each. What I do know is that I used a brush called a Kuretake Sumi Brush Pen in the painting of the Northern Harrier. When that pen ran out of ink and I didn't have time to refill I switched to a brush pen of another brand, Pentel I think, but possibly Pilot.

I also know that I did take a one semester course in Chinese Brush Painting many, many years ago. I greatly enjoyed it, and realized how complicated it is and how much skill is involved. And I know I never have studied sumi-e, which as far as I can tell, is the Japanese equivalent of Chinese Brush Painting. But I could very well be wrong since it seems to accentuate a simpler and more spontaneous use of the brush. Perhaps it is just one type of Japanese Brush Painting.

Who cares you might ask? Well anyone who actually knows something about sumi-e or Chinese brush painting probably does. So I'm trying to be as accurate as I can be, given my slight knowledge. When I did study Chinese Brush Painting I do recall that I preferred Japanese brush painting as far as I could tell. Japanese seemed bolder and less conventional, harder than the softness of Chinese brush painting. Today my tastes have changed and I'm more appreciative of Chinese Brush Painting, again with the caveat that I don't know much about either.

To further complicate things my recent interest in both stems largely from ukiyo-e printmaking, again a Japanese art. As I looked at some of it over the last few years I've realized how  elegant and rich the black outlines of so many of the shapes are. Those outlines are rarely just one undifferentiated width. They are light and dark, thick and thin, etc. This gives a real vitality to the prints, which often also have very strong colors. But the color is less important to me than the line. In particular this interest in ukiyo-e led me to the drawings of Hokusai, a master of the brush. He truly is someone who is  a master of rich line.

All of which leads me back to the work above. I've been using Sumi Brush Pens for almost a year now I think. I greatly enjoy them. But I have been bothered a bit by the fact that the ink cartridge can only hold one color, generally a rich black. It is difficult to get the rich variations of black and gray that characterizes brush painting of both China and Japan.

So over the last few months I've been experimenting with various sumi brushes and real sumi ink made from a sumi stick and capable of infinite gradations of gray and black. The first two sumi brushes I bought were far too large for my paper and created nothing but blobs. Finally I bought a very small Chinese calligraphy brush. It is the right size though probably not as flexible as a painting brush. If I could have found a small Chinese painting brush I would have bought it. In any case three of the four paintings on this page were created with it and sumi ink created from using an ink stick and water.

I realized that this is probably an impossibly convoluted explanation of how and why I did these paintings. But for the few people who read this and know something about Japanese and Chinese brush painting it will probably make sense. And, EVENTUALLY, I hope what I've learned will show up in my prints. For now though I'm still completely enamored of the brush painting itself, though I also realize what a rank beginner I must seem to those who actually know something about it.

Completed Print and Brush Pen Sketches

I think it's been a week since I finished the combined linocut/woodcut of Winter Wren in leaves. But it's been a busy time and I haven't gotten around to showing it here yet. One of the reasons for the delay is that I've been out walking and birding and taking some photos.

As the weather gets colder it's harder to convince myself to sketch from life outside. I inevitably start going through my photos and field sketches looking for a subject for a new painting or print. That was the case recently with most of these brush pen (either Kuretake or Pentel) sketches. All but the Cooper's Hawk are from photos taken earlier this year. The earliest, above is a Great Egret with Forster's Tern at Jake's Landing near Cape May, NJ. I liked the scene but made a mistake in bringing the dark reflections on the water down so low that the tern more or less disappeared.

More recently I've seen a number of Eastern Chipmunks. Though I'd like to sketch them live, and occasionally they do sit still, I'm so unfamiliar with them that working from photos seemed like good practice. And of course the unadulterated cuteness of chipmunk and acorn was hard to ignore.

The Eastern Towhee above was I think from early spring. As usual I like it when I can see the full bird, head to toe. That makes it easier and to me more worthwhile sketching. With the full bird in sight it's much easier to get a sense of movement, weight, balance.  As usual it is hard to exaggerate the size of the tail.

The only recent photo was the basis of the sketch above. It is a Cooper's Hawk. You may agree with me that the one on the far right, where I ignored the feathers to a large extent, is much more successful. One of the things that I most like about using a brush pen is that I'm forced to be both simple, quick and decisive. It doesn't lend itself to tentative strokes.  And so I think there is an immediacy and sense of spontaneity that is appealing. On the other hand if you make a mistake you have to live with it, as in one of the chipmunk sketches above where the arm is much too small and out of scale.

I continue to do these sketches because I learn from them. And I'd like to incorporate their simplicity in my prints. Time will tell.

And finally the completed print of a Winter Wren in leaves. It is a combination print of linocut and woodcut. I printed it a few years ago as a black linocut. But I always felt that it wasn't as colorful as it might be. Since I wanted to experiment with a new water-soluble ink I returned to it as the basis for a color print. I printed the original linocut in black using the new ink, Caligo Safe-wash. I then used my old Daniel Smith ink to print orange on a woodblock and overprint the black. I then went back to the linocut and printed a Daniel Smith brown after having cut away more of the block to that some of the color created by orange over black remained. My intent was to cut a little more of the linocut away and then print Caligo black on top of the entire print. But as I proofed I kept feeling that the black was too dominant. I also found that the Caligo was too glossy and out of keeping with the more matte Daniel Smith. So in the end I carved away most of the linoleum block and then printed what remained with the very little Daniel Smith black that I still have.

I am happy with this and it's fulfilled my goal to a large extent of making the original Winter Wren print much more colorful.

Field Sketching Resumes, 'The Natural Eye' Begins

Male Wood Duck with Turtles on Log. Sumi Brush Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

I wish I had been there but I was not and once again I missed the opening of 'The Natural Eye', the annual exhibit of the Society of Wildlife Artists in London. Examples of some of the work can be seen online at What's On at The Mall Galleries. If you go to page four you'll see my two works. I thought this year was finally going to be the year that I and Jerene were able to visit the exhibit and meet other artists but it just wasn't possible. As I've said previously it is the only wildlife art exhibit that I find exciting. The link above gives you a very good representation of the work on exhibit and a very good representation of the type of bird and wildlife art that I like.

Finally yesterday I was able to do some field sketching along the Manayunk Canal. I was hoping that a heavy storm the day before might have brought some unusual birds. But if they were there I didn't find them. I had however recently bought a sample pack of brush pens from jetpens.com because I've been so happy with the Kuretake Sumi Brush Pen that I bought there. I also wanted to try some of them out. A few are far too fine and stiff for my purposes. But others have a fluidity and flexibility that I like. An example of one of the pens is above. If I recall correctly it is a Pilot Brush pen. When I got home I added color with Caran d'Ache NeoColor II water-soluble crayons. I then used a waterbrush to make washes from the crayons. I know this sounds like an advertisement for these media, and you can certainly find plenty examples of such online. But that's not the case. I'd call it more objective reporting: these are the tools I used. In almost all cases here they are not the best tools but the best convenient tools. I could have used a sumi or watercolor brush along with watercolor. But that's less convenient, especially when out in the field, and unsure of whether or not I'll sketch. These tools allow me that possibility while carrying very little gear.

Great Blue Heron, European Starling, Northern Cardinal. Sumi Brush Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

Above is another example of brush pen field sketches. On the right is a Great Blue Heron up in the trees also done yesterday along the Manayunk Canal. It's done with the Pilot Brush Pen. I also used that pen for the European Starling seen from my studio window. Above it a drawing mainly from memory of a Northern Cardinal that appeared momentarily in front of the same window. The Zebra brush pen was far too fine and stiff for my tastes, but others may love it. I guess it depends on how you plan to use it.

In any case it's nice to be doing field sketches again and I'm happy to be experimenting with these various brush pens.

Winter Wren in Leaves. Proof of Combination Woodcut/Linocut by Ken Januski.

Finally I'm continuing the combination woodcut/linocut of the Winter Wrens in Leaves. I've printed the black(Caligo Safewash Ink) on good paper(Shin  Torinoko Cream). The black is from the old linoleum block. I then printed an orange on a woodblock on top of that. This is a proof. I didn't rub the baren as hard as usual because I was afraid the black ink might not be completely dry. As a result you can see that the orange is spotty. It may also be a bit darker than I want. But I do like the brown that results from printing orange(Daniel Smith Water-soluble Ink) over the black. Once I've printed the orange for the edition I'll cut away some of the black and print what remains on top of the orange over black. Easy as Pie as they say.

Pushing On With Watercolor and Sumi Brush Pen

Adult and Juvenile Sora at Tinicum. Sumi Brush Pen and Watercolor by Ken Januski.

I'm not sure why it is that members of the rail family are among our favorite birds. I'm sure partially it's due to their relative rarity and to their general secrecy. But when you see them you also realize that they have a very subtle beauty to them. Not exactly Scarlet Tanagers or Cape May Warblers but striking all the same.

We were at Tinicum (aka John Heinz NWR) the other day looking for some of the collection of unusual birds that have been there recently. These sora were among them and they were very cooperative in staying out in the open for us to look at them. There was also a third adult that made a brief appearance.

I did a couple mediocre sumi brush pen field sketches of them and of one of the two Tri-colored Heron. I'm not showing them because I pretty much ruined them by trying to add color back in the studio. But I did take a number of photos. Because they were so striking I decided to do another 12x16 sumi and watercolor painting of them. It's based on a number of photos, and my memory of the birds.

My favorite watercolor artists generally use it in a much more gentle, fresher and more subtle way than I do. I can greatly admire their work. But when I try to work in that way I'm generally disappointed with the results. But I still want to work in watercolor. The sense of light and freshness that it can have is just too desirable to ignore. So I keep trying. This is the fifth of the larger, for me, 12x16 paintings with watercolor and sumi brush pen.

Eventually I'll turn back to printmaking but for now it makes sense to keep pushing on with this combination of media. It feels liberating to be working at a larger scale, though it's nowhere near the 72x96 inch abstract paintings that I used to do. In any case I feel like I might finally be able to get to where watercolor is a comfortable, or at least somewhat comfortable, medium for me if I continue working at this size and with these media. So I will keep at this for awhile.

Though I did start reading a new book on Japanese woodblock printmaking, and that is already teasing me with the thought of returning to wood blocks.

Rendering the Experience, the Photo, or the Picture Postcard

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

I always feel a bit guilty showing work of mine that is largely based on photos. That's because I'm so critical of art based on photos. That was the case with the Killdeer in my last post. The more I've painted though, especially since I turned from abstraction to naturalism the more I realize that photos aren't anathema. They're just very dangerous.

But I think it would be safe to say that the vast majority of people who look at my work, or most art, are very partial to work that looks like a photo. And that's why I'm so adamantly against it. The general populace now gauges reality through photos, even though they are very limited and show only one aspect of objects portrayed.

Still I use them occasionally because they help me to remember all the details that I often can't seem to force into my memory. In that sense they are a useful aid to memory(aide memoire).

More often though I'd like to portray the experience of something. If you've ever seen a Ruby-throated Hummingbird you probably realize that they rarely sit still. They are always moving, well almost always. And the movement is more emblematic of them than  those rare times when they perch.

So the 12x16 watercolor above is done strictly from memory. I've looked at the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds in our yard a lot over the last few summers. That doesn't mean that I also haven't missed a lot. But I wanted to do something spontaneous that was based on my memory of them and of the Monarda on which they often feed. The painting above is meant to render just one hummingbird, not a number of them. And within a few seconds just one hummingbird will have been in that many different positions.

So which is more 'real', the painting above, or one that captures every iridescent feather in a sitting bird that looks like it's been stuffed?

As I started to write this brief post I was going to stick to the dichotomy between rendering an experience and rendering a photo. But I realized that there is also a third alternative and that is the picture postcard. It is more like a picturesque rendering of a scene, relying more on sentimental formula than anything else. I don't see that much of this sort of art, but I'm sure that's only because I try to steer clear of places that concentrate on cute art. Still it is one of the other ways in which artists try to portray what they see, especially in terms of birds and wildlife.

May You Be Forever Sketching

Willow Flycatchers. Sumi Brush Pen Sketches by Ken Januski.

As I was completing the two pages above in a Stillman and Birn Epsilon sketchbook yesterday I was thinking about how much I've been enjoying drawing recently, especially with the sumi brush pen. Then on the radio I heard a version of Bob Dylan's 'May You Stay Forever Young,' a song I've always very much liked. It seemed to parallel my feelings about sketching: may I and anyone else who likes to draw continue to do so. It is hugely rewarding.

Cedar Waxwing, Fish Crow, et al. Sumi Brush Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

I mentioned on another post that many of these sumi sketches have been based on my own photos. I started somewhere near the beginning of my boxes of them, all alphabetically sorted. As you can see with the Willow Flycatchers above I'm reaching the end. There are no local birds whose names start with 'Z'. That just leaves 'Y', with all those Yellow Something-or-Other birds.

I've also tried to continue using the sumi brush pen when I'm out birding. It creates a line that is a little too large for the size of the sketchbook that I carry in my back pocket. But I'm getting better at being able to use finesse and sensitivity of touch to be able to work this small. Above a Cedar Waxwing and young Green Heron, both seen along the nearby Manayunk Canal, and a Fish Crow on telephone pole and as yet unidentified wasp on the flowers of our Mountain Mint, both seen while I sat in a chair in our backyard.

Grass Spider and Wasp, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, et al. Sumi Brush Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

I spent about 10-15 minutes watching the scene above in our backyard, just a foot away from where I sat, through my Pentax Papilio Extreme Close-Focus Binoculars. (I'm not trying to name drop in this post but when a product works well, like Stillman and Birn sketchbooks, the Kuretake Sumi Brush Pen and the Pentax extreme close focus binoculars I'm happy to mention them in case others might want to use them. In fact I only know about the binoculars due to a talk by an accomplished local birder on Birding Beyond Birds, e.g. dragonflies, butterflies, etc. where he mentioned how good they were).

For the first time ever we've noticed a not of three-dimensional spider webs in our yard. They can be as deep as they are broad. As I watched the small wasp and the spider in the web I really couldn't figure out what was going on. Both were upside down. Was the wasp trapped and desperately trying to get out? If so why did he sometimes seem to approach the spider rather than vice versa? Was the web sticky, like most are? If so why did he seem to move so freely. As I watched it through the binoculars, mainly so I could see the spider better, I decided I might as well try to get it down on paper. That is the scene in upper left.

Later when I went inside I investigated and found that the spider is most likely a 'Grass Spider', one of many funnel spiders, whose webs are not sticky. This spider is also timid and will often run from whatever is in its web. Well that pretty well explains what I saw here. It is amazing how much there is to see in nature if you take the time to look.

Also on the page one of the visiting Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, feeding on the Monarda in the yard, and a Willow Flycatcher at Morris Arboretum, the same bird portrayed from photos at the top.

Whimbrel and White Ibis. Sumi Brush Pen Sketch by Ken Januski.

There is a big juried show coming up that I'm preparing to submit work for. No it is not Birds in Art. In any case as I continue to do sumi brush pen drawings from my photos I'm always thinking about which ones could be used for something more developed. Above are two pages of Whimbrel, seen in Cape May, NJ over the last few years, and an immature White Ibis seen at Heinz NWR in Philadelphia a number of years ago. I never know until I do the drawings which resulting drawing might convince me that it is the one to develop more. Time will tell. There are only a couple of weeks before submissions are due to I'll need to decide soon.

Common Whitetail., Killdeer, Great Blue Heron in Tree, et al.  Sumi Brush Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

And finally a couple more small sketchbook pages of sumi brush pen sketches from life. Except for the Common Whitetail at top left, all of the images are from the Manayunk Canal a few days ago: another immature Green Heron, with nearby Killdeer, and three versions of a Great Blue Heron curled in various intriguing shapes up in a tree.

I realize that in switching from pen or pencil to sumi brush pen in my field sketches I'm losing a lot of detail. But I think I'm gaining life and/or animation as well as a greater concentration on the entire scene, all of which are helpful in doing a more developed painting or print. It's well worth it to me. And it probably has something to do with why I have a renewed excitement about the possibilities of drawing.

Inspiration Is The Reward of Persistence

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. Sumi Brush Pen Sketch by Ken Januski.

There is a fairly convoluted source of the title of this post. I have been listening to Robert Greenberg's course for The Teaching Company on composer Igor Stravinsky. As he was talking about how Stravinsky studied composition with the composer Rimsky-Korsakov he quoted Stephen Walsh, from his book Stravinsky: A Creative Spring: Russia and France, 1882-1934, on Rimsky-Korsakov's working methods. He was old school and regimented and believed that "inspiration was the reward of persistence."

The reason that I even noticed this I think is that I'm now on about the 50th sheet of sketches from my own photos of birds using the Kuretake Sumi Brush Pen. Why in the world am I doing this? It almost seems like penance, though there is no denying the pleasure in using the brush pen. But for all the pleasure there's a lot of pain. Almost every page has at least one mistake on it, where I wish that I'd made a different mark rather than the one I did. Some pages are all mistakes.

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. Sumi Brush Pen Sketch by Ken Januski.

My thought has been that I am learning something. By having to decide on just one unerasable line for the top of the head, or the chin, or the curve of the breast I'm making decisions and learning something. I think that the bulk of what anyone learns come from making decisions. They may be right or wrong but you don't really learn much until you invest in a decision.

There's also a bit of hope in this. I'm hoping that it will pay off, especially as I get to page 50 and it doesn't look significantly better than page 1. But still I think that at some point it will pay off, that at some point I'll spontaneously put to work all that I've learned and that the work will look spontaneous, not labored.

So I hope you can see where this quote regarding Rimsky-Korsakov was so striking to me. And it does ring true. Sometimes for me my most inspired, or at any rate the least labored work, will come after a long time doing studies of some sort. Below are two more pages from the recent spate of sketches with the sumi brush pen.

Purple Finch. Sumi Brush Pen Sketch by Ken Januski.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet. Sumi Brush Pen Sketch by Ken Januski.

I'm most likely going to kill off one of my web sites soon and replace it with pages right here. You can see some of the replacement pages in the links on the upper right under Gallery. It was easy to choose some woodcuts and linocuts to use as examples of my work. But due to moving from one computer to another over the last few years I've lost track of many of the photos of my own field sketches.

So today I went through the sketchbooks for the last 6-7 years, back to my very first incredibly feeble attempts at drawing birds from life, and scanned a number of them into the computer. Two of the most recent are below. In the first I added watercolor to the pencil sketches after I got back home. In the second I added wash using Caran d'Ache Neo-color II water soluble crayons in the field to the Black-crowned Night Heron and Yellow-breasted Chat.

Though there is still a lot of room for improvement I think you can see some improvement compared to the earlier sketches below them.

Wood Thrush, Acadian Flycatcher, Red-eyed Vireo. Field Sketch by Ken Januski with watercolor added later.

Black-crowned Night Heron and Yellow-breasted Chat. Field Sketch with Neo-color II Crayon wash by Ken Januski.

All in all I'm glad that I've pursued sketching birds from life. There is just one primary source for that: Drawing Birds by John Busby who just recently passed away. It was that book, later complemented by the artists who then frequented the Wildlife Art thread of Birdforum that convinced me that working from life was the primary method of making wildlife art alive. Even more it convinced me that wildlife art could be ART.

Green Heron, Belted Kingfisher, Cedar Waxwing... Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

Baltimore Oriole, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Red-headed Woodpecker... Field Sketch by Ken Januski.


There are some artists who can do field studies that are far more realistic and accurate than most wildlife artists can do spending hours in their studio. But I'm not one of them. Neither was John Busby as far as I can tell. .He was more interested in capturing the life of birds. In doing so he also turned them into art.

So my field sketches never look at all finished. But that's really unimportant. To me they are generally exciting. And eventually, after all that perseverance, they tend to inspire me to more finished work.  Thank you Mr. Rimsky-Korsakov!

Canada Geese, Common Grackle... Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

White Ibis, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Chipmunk... Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

Seduced by Sum Brush Pen Studies

Osprey. Sumi Brush Pen Studies by Ken Januski.

Ovenbirds. Sumi Brush Pen Studies by Ken Januski.

This hasn't been much of a June so far. Either too hot and muggy to spend much time outside, or too wet to spend much time outside. So I've spent far more time, and ink, using the Kuretake Sumi Brush Pen than I ever would have anticipated. But it is addicting nonetheless.

I think that there are a couple of reasons for this: one has to do with the pen itself -- it makes very fluid strokes. But the other has nothing to do with the pen. It is instead the thrill I've always found in sketches that capture animation, from Rembrandt to some cartoons. I do think there is an almost primordial appeal to art that translates marks into an evocation of a lively, moving body, whether it belongs to humans or animals. Almost like a magic capturing of spirit.

My background is as a formal, abstract artist. Among my many teachers was a famous woman artist in California whose somewhat diaristic art garnered her many avid female (mainly) students. Though I wasn't fond of the adoring followers or the diaristic aspect of the art it was honest as could be I think. I greatly liked her. But she did say one thing that stuck with me when she critiqued my work as a graduate student in art: it was very good formally she said but it didn't seem to be ABOUT anything.

This has never bothered me, the fact that my art was formal and not about anything in particular. But when I started to work from nature I suddenly found that it was ABOUT something. That in turn allowed me to indulge in my liking for art that captured animation, the sense of liveliness in subjects.

So once I started using the sumi brush pen I found that I liked many of my drawings, even though most were done from my photos, because they did seem co capture the animation of birds, the sense of the postures they take, the way the weight is distributed, etc., etc.

Palm Warblers. Sumi Brush Pen Studies by Ken Januski.

Least Sandpipers. Sumi Brush Pen Studies by Ken Januski.

And so with the weather keeping me inside more or less I've continued to do these 11x14 sketches of birds with the sumi brush pen. I'm up to about 40 pages in about 10 days I thnk. Besides the sense of animation there is something else that is very important I think that the pen forces me to do: SIMPLIFY.  I've actually not simplified that much in the sketches of Least Sandpipers immediately above and I think they suffer a bit from it. I got carried away I think trying to show too many of the beautiful feathers. Photography allows us to see the details in feathers and feather patterns that we don't really see with the naked eye. When they're right there in front of us in a photo it's tempting to try to put them all down. But it's far more productive I think to just suggest the feathers by simplifying. It certainly creates a more lively work by simplifying them.

So I may be able to make just two marks for the bill, one above and one below. Even the line separating the two may be too much. So I have to look closely at the photos and then decide which few lines I want to put down. Not all of these work. There are many mistakes and missteps. But there are others that I'm quite happy with. They simply capture the sense of the bird. And they look alive.

Northern Mockingbirds and Pintails Sumi Brush Pen Studies by Ken Januski.

As I said in another post I'm unhappy that I've been able to do so few field sketches with the new brush. Below you see my two newest attempts. Not much to write home about. I think part of the problem is that the sketchbook is too small for the brush, this being a much smaller Moleskine sketchbook. Also I don't have as solid a surface to paint on since I'm holding the sketchbook in one hand and that's not as stable as a table. And of course my subjects are quite uncooperative and move on me. But there are compensations with sketching from life: like the Great Crested Flycatcher eating a Red Admiral butterfly. I thought he had a dragonfly. Until I put the binoculars on him in his new location and saw the unmistakable outer wing edges of a beautiful Red Admiral.

I do like the very simple Gray Catbird at bottom right. And I'm confident that this brush pen will eventually come in very handy in the field.

Carolina Wren, Great Crested Flycatcher with Red Admiral and Gray Catbird. Sumi Brush Pen Field Sketches by Ken Januski.

Picture-winged Fly, Veery and Common Grackle.  Sumi Brush Pen Field Sketches by Ken Januski.

After I'd posted this I decided to try to combine sumi brush pen and watercolor, in my years old quest to get a vigorous watercolor that still looked like something more than random marks. This still remains a goal of mine. With that said this is a 12x16 watercolor with underlying sumi brush pen sketch on Arches 140# paper. It's based on a number of shorebirds, mainly Red Knots, Ruddy Turnstones and Dunlin seen at Cooks Beach, NJ in May.

Red Knot and Other Shorebirds at Cooks Beach. Sumi Brush Pen and Watercolor by Ken Januski.

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.

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.