The Problem with Redheads

There are some birds that are bold and beautiful in nature that always seem to end up dead on canvas. The first I ran into was a Scarlet Tanager. That brilliant red and black is so striking in real life. But try to put it down in paint, especially from a photo, and it seems to turn to mud. Same thing with a Red-headed Woodpecker, especially with the mature red-maroon head.

I think the reason for this is that both birds are largely undifferentiated areas of full color, black, white and two types of red, an orange red and a maroon red. The black and white would do well in a graphic design but never seems to work as a painting. Though I've never seen a Cock of the Rock the paintings I see always look horribly dead, even given the bright orange red of the bird. There seems to be a similar problem with it.

I took quite a number of photos of a Red-headed Woodpecker in Illinois a few years ago. As is typical it was on a snag silhouetted against an undifferentiated blue gray sky. I could never convince myself to do a painting of it. The best I could do was a felt tip drawing that accentuated the trees and sky as much as the bird.

So it seems hopeless right? Well until you see this Audubon painting. What imagination, both in terms of formal composition and actual event portrayed. All of the potential problems of portraying a Red-headed Woodpecker are smashed to bits. As Julie Zickefoose says after seeing work like that other artists might just as well pick up their toys and go home.

Growing up as someone most interested in abstract art I could never quite see the appeal of Audubon. I also couldn't tell where he fit in with the likes of Picasso and Matisse. Many people seemed to have his prints or reproductions of them. He must be considered an artist of some sort. I didn't actually dislike him. I just couldn't categorize him. I think that's one problem with learning something when young. You tend to think things belong into the categories you've been taught about. Then you realize that sometimes they don't.

The more I've done bird art the more my respect for Audubon has grown. The amount of imagination in this Red-headed Woodpecker painting I find staggering.

The other artist I automatically turn to for something like this is Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Some birders prefer him to Audubon. Much as I like Fuertes I prefer Audubon. Fuertes seems to have done a number of versions of this bird. One is here. There are others that are somewhat more dynamic in composition but I hesitate to link to sites I'm not familiar with. I think the one shown here shows the problems I mention with a Red-headed. They are just so simple: black, red, white, often on a grayish snag against a blue sky. It's very hard to make an interesting painting out of that. Fuertes does a good job. But to me Audubon creates art!

For any readers who have come here via my post on the Pennsylvania Rare Bird List I think this post may help explain why I'm not that concerned with taking documentary photos of birds I see, even when they are rare. I'm always much more interesting in painting a lively portrait of the bird, one that combines accuracy and art.

All of which is a very long way of saying that the immature Red-headed Woodpecker that I found along the Wissahickon in Philadelphia on Monday was also there on Tuesday in the same location. The watercolor at top is based primarily on a photo I took on Tuesday.

The best way to find the area if you're not familiar with it is to look at the trail map published by Friends of the Wissahickon. Unfortunately you cannot see it online. If you have the map the bird is in a snag across the stream from Forbidden Drive right upstream of where Gorgas Lane trail meets Forbidden Drive. There is a large 60' snag that is clearly visible and hard to miss. If you don't have the map you can use the Google map at the FOW site. Unfortunately it's not easy. If you see Gorgas Park on the left side of the map center it on the map. Then keep enlarging it until you see a tributary stream feeding into the Wissahickon. That is Gorgas Lane trail and the snag is right across the Wissahickon. You can cross the bridge a few hundred yards to get closer but you can actually see it better from the Forbidden Drive side. I haven't been out today but may check again on Thursday or Friday. Since it was there two days in a row I hope it will stick around awhile longer.

Time to Paint Another Warbler

A few posts back I mentioned that it was 'Time to Paint a Warbler'. That was after numerous field sketches. This weekend, when it's really too hot and uncomfortable to do much outside, it seems like the right time to renew my attempts at warbler paintings.

I'll confess I don't like most warbler paintings I see. They either slavishly copy a photograph, having all the excitement of a photograph slavishly copied, do a fair job of creating a lively portrait of a warbler but then have no idea what to do with the background, if there even is one, or more likely do a watercolor, mainly in light washes, that looks like a pale imitation of what is really a brilliantly colored wood warbler.

Every once in a while, when I have such a dilemma, I'll pull out my baby elephant reproduction version of Audubon's prints of American birds. Rarely am I disappointed. But yesterday I was. From what I can tell Audubon didn't use as much the artistic imagination and adventurousness that he uses in many of his plates in these. Almost all are perched on what I surmise is relevant foliage. Perhaps if I look on another day my view will change and I'll see his typical artistry. In any case they weren't much help yesterday.

Finally I decided to do something similar to many warbler renderings: paint a warbler among relevant foliage. Mine is tightly cropped however rather than showing more of the foliage as in Audubon and others. I would prefer to avoid this tight cropping because it often looks too much like something just copied from a photo. But I also wanted to accentuate the bird, and it was done more from one of my recent photos than from my field sketches. The watercolor above is a small one, about 5x9 inches. on watercolor paper.

I've recently been rereading two books by artist Bruce Pearson, 'An Artist on Migration', and 'Birdscape.' I think it's in the latter that he says an artist doesn't try to portray what he sees. Instead he portrays 'what he wants you to see.'
The difference is that he wants to create the same sense of passion in the viewer that he has as he views, and paints, the bird.

There is a dichotomy in American wildlife art, and probably the wildlife art of many countries, between art and science. David J. Wagner in his wonderful book 'American Wildlife Art' uses Karl Rungius and Louis Agassiz Fuertes as well-known examples. Many people knowledgeable about birds prefer Fuertes to Audubon.

This makes sense if you value science over art in wildlife art, not that Fuertes didn't also make very artistic paintings. He did and I in no way want to criticize him. I much regret that I didn't avail myself of the opportunity to study his work firsthand when I was a student at Cornell. But Rungius was more aware of the art world and incorporated it in his own wildlife paintings.

In my own work I continually struggle, especially with warblers, to create paintings that will make viewers see what I want them to see. There is an element of science in this, but in my work art always plays a larger part.

This is a long route to saying that though I'm happy with this little painting I'm also disappointed in it. All my recent warbler works seem like studies. I, hopefully, am working my way to a more ambitious portrayal of what I want 'you' to see in the wood warblers.

Thoughts On/From Famous Artists , No. 1

For various reasons I haven't been able to do much artwork so far in 2009. But I have been reading. Often I incorporate what I've been reading into my posts about work that I'm doing. But the quotes don't always fit in and I sometimes tend to forget them.

So this is the first of what will probably be a series on thoughts from and about artists. I've been rereading George Miksch Sutton's "To a Young Bird Artist: Letters from Louis Agassiz Fuertes to George Miksch Sutton." The section that seems worth quoting concerns values, and colors.

On page 25 Fuertes says in a letter: "We are naturally blind to all but the most blatant & contrasting values, & even great painters -- especially of the earlier schools & periods never did get discriminating in this essential matter....Many old school painters understood contrast thoroughly, & played it like the masters that they were....Color subtlety is simplicity itself compared to value subtlety, which includes every possible element of color variation as thoroughly as does white light itself. Great pictures are full of ingenious tricks of color to overcome the failure of the painter to achieve his values."

Fuertes' point here was to show Sutton how to actually see the color of the birds that he painted. So for instance the bright red of a cardinal does not actually look red when it is in shadow. But I was more struck by the last line about 'ingenious tricks of color to overcome the failure of the painter to achieve his values.'

As I read this I couldn't help but think about art I like the best. Like many artists I like many types of art so it's hard to generalize. But if I try to generalize about what I like the BEST, I think it often includes rich tonal variety, almost an orchestration of value. Even more I wondered if it helped to explain how I've chosen color, especially in my abstract work.

The accompanying photos are of a wholly non-objective painting that I did in Kentucky in the early 1980s. I chose it because I think it really is more about color and shape than anything else. The brushwork is simple. There's no recognizable subject. I think that when I did it I really was just concerned with color and shape. But artists are rarely all that self-conscious about what they do. I didn't think about color and shape as I did the painting. But something guided me in my choice of color and shape.

After reading this quote from Fuertes I had to wonder if what guided my choice of color was really a search for an orchestration of values. It really sounded right to me as I read that passage. So I Photoshopped the color version of this painting into a black and white version.

I'm of course not an objective viewer of my own work. But it does seem to me that there is a rich variety of tone in the black and white version. I'm happy with it and for me at least it has a singing tonal quality. I think I'd say this if the work wasn't mine as well. I could be wrong.

In either case I think that Fuertes was right in his way. I never consciously think about value in my work, neither 25 years ago when I painted this, nor now. But subconsciously I think that I was choosing my colors based on a bright orchestration of values.

I remember when I first started studying art, both on my own and in school. There were those horribly dull charts of black, white and every shade of gray in between. Dullsville! But many years later it's hard for me to think of anything that makes a painting, or drawing, more vibrant and exciting than a good use of values.