'Sketching a Man Jumping Out of a Window Before He Hits the Ground' Is Easy

While trying to SEE let alone identify or sketch dragonflies that we've seen in backyard and at Morris Arboretum and the Manayunk Canal over the last few days I was struck by how incredibly difficult it can be to use them as subjects for art. Some, not all, seem to never sit still. Worse they constantly change direction so that it's difficult to even take photos. I say this because with other subjects you might reasonably consider that the subject will continue in the same direction. So you can focus the camera a little bit ahead of the moving object hoping that the shutter will click just as he flies by. Forget that philosophy with dragonflies. They instead will have made two or three 90-180 degree turns instead of heading on to where you expect them to be.

I seemed to remember a quote from either Delacroix or Degas about being able to sketch a cat as if fell out of a window. Hmm. I don't think I have any hidden antagonism to our cats. As it is it turns out the quote was from Delacroix and he said that if you couldn't sketch a man jumping from a 4th floor window before he hit the ground you had little future as an artist. But there at least gravity is at work. You pretty much know where the man is heading. He won't make any 90 degree turns or looping curlicues. That's the source of the post title. Compared to drawing dragonflies from life Delacroix's task is easy.

Yesterday I took a number of photos of the small damselfly at top. As usual it looked unusual, perhaps a damselfly we'd never seen before. But I know better. It is, at least I'm pretty sure, a Variable Dancer, a damselfly fly that we've seen before including at Morris.

You can probably see why this type of photo, or sketch if I'd tried, doesn't often lead to interesting art. The seen is always one of incredible flatness, an almost two-dimensional subject against a flat two-dimensional background. Flat, flat, flat. I think that's one reason that when I use dragonflies in my artwork I make them small, part of a larger scene so that their two-dimensional qualities won't be so evident.

On the other hand if I paint them small I lose much of the detail, which is often quite striking. There are plenty of people doing illustrations of dragonflies and they concentrate on the detail, often at the expense of a sense of either animation or environment. But it's hard to get both. I try it various ways. The way I've tried here is to use a pen for the sketch. I know I won't be able to get many details, that the ink will run, and that every mistake will be there to stay. But it does seem to give me some chance of getting a bit of artistic spontaneity into such a horribly flat composition. The Dancer does disappear a bit more than I'd like but at the same time the painting doesn't look like a detailed, but somewhat dead illustration. Since dragonfly season has just begun I'm sure that there will be many more opportunities ahead.

I printed another color on the two-block reduction woodcut of the 'Black' Squirrel, Palm Warbler and Mourning Cloak butterfly and it is below. But the ink continues to take a long time to dry so I had to stop work on it and let the ink dry. In the meantime I decided to try some sketches based on many photos I've taken over the year of 2015. I don't like working from photos. But they can be good for studying details of birds that are often hard to see in binoculars. So anything based on them is almost always a quick study. I can't see doing developed work based on them. In this instance I happened to see a lot of Orchard Orioles over the last few weeks so it was nice to be able to see, and sketch, some of their details. This is a quick pencil and watercolor sketch in a Stillman and Birn Gamma sketchbook.

And finally the newest state of the two-block reduction woodcut. After much experimental proofing I decided that I needed to use a lighter tone in the background on the right side, especially as I wanted it to contrast with the black of the squirrel and tree on the left. The last step, I hope, will be to print that black, and to determine how much to leave on the right. This is a 4x6 inch print. It seems ridiculous to be making so many difficult artistic decisions about something so tiny. But what can I do? I've started and I'll finish. Hopefully the results, though small, will prove to be worth the effort.

Illustrating, Sketchily, Our Part of the Philadelphia Mid-Winter Bird Census

American Goldfinch, Great Blue Heron and Killdeer Along Manayunk Canal. Watercolor and Pen Sketch by Ken Januski.

Yesterday was the 29th Annual Philadelphia Mid-Winter Bird Census. We've taken part for a number of years, probably around 10 or so. Though we'd been looking forward to it the predicted wind-chill of 0 degrees at 7 a.m. was a bit worrisome. And we were going to start off along the Manayunk Canal and Schuylkill River, which meant that it would probably be even colder. That predicted coldness probably got us off to a slightly later start than normal.

Still sun was predicted and that can make all the difference, both for being warm and for seeing active birds. We were on the road by about 7:30, after counting some yard birds, and finally got home about 4:30, with a couple of bathroom breaks and one quick lunch. I haven't totaled our species, since they include a number of locations as well as a few birds n the car along the way (well actually close to 300 since they included large flocks of Ring-billed Gulls, Canada Geese and European Starlings). My guess is that our total will be about 35 species.

The average total over the years for all species from all participants has been 92. With a number of warmer winters recently, really almost too warm for it to feel like a winter bird census, it will be interesting to see if this year's count is higher or lower than recent ones. I do know that in spite of the cold it was a beautiful day to be out. Days like this, especially when they include almost the entire day outdoors, remind me of just what an enjoyable season winter can be.

I took a number of photos along the way, mainly for documentary purposes, especially in the case of rare birds, as with the Green Heron a couple of years ago. The bird that we see the least over the years, and that we saw yesterday, was one solo Fox Sparrow. I took some bad photos of it. My guess is that none of our birds will be all that unusual, unless they are made rarer than usual due to the cold weather. Most likely the Killdeer we saw at Manayunk Canal and the Eastern Bluebirds at The Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education will be our best candidates for rare birds for the count. Eastern Bluebirds are always around in winter but it often seems that they are hard to find.

In any case I'm not showing any photos. As you well know I don't find much excitement in them. Instead I'd like to portray or elicit some sense of the actual experience of being out birding, and seeing birds, for the count. The scene at top is a reality-based seen but not one actually seen. We saw the Killdeer, American Goldfinch and Great Blue Heron at the same time in the same spot.

But we didn't see them like this. The composition is an example of artistic license. It's hard to know what to call this watercolor. Is it an illustration? Is it art? Is it somewhere in between? It's an illustration in the sense that I'd like it to give a sense of yesterday's experience. But most illustrations, as the term is used today, include much more detail. It is art in the sense that formal concerns are important, especially the sense of composition and color. But it's also very quickly done, and it needs to be. I want to post it today, when the Philadelphia Mid-winter Bird Census, is still timely, not a week from now when I've been able to spend more time on both detail and artistry. Some would say timely deadlines make it closer to illustration than to art. It really doesn't make much difference. I think I'll just  call it a sketch.

I find such sketches very rewarding. I don't get lost in detail. And I often try new things. It's amazing to me how many more developed works stem from sketches like these. A year ago I did a fairly unsuccessful watercolor of a similar scene, a Killdeer and Great Blue Heron in the same location along the Manayunk Canal. Since then I've toyed many times with making it into a print. I think the temptation will be even stronger with this new sketch.