Finished Acrylic

This is the finished version of the Least Tern, Forster's Terns, Mallards and Great Egret painting at 'The Meadows' in Cape May, NJ. I did add just the slightest bit of detail to the egret. And of course went over the reeds many times.
In contrast to the sense of animation that I mentioned in a recent post here I'm much more concerned with orchestration or perhaps design. Color, light, shape, texture and the subjects themselves should all add up and fit together in a 'certain' way. Who knows what that 'certain' way is but I think it's unique to each artist. You know when it seems right. For me in this painting a lot of it has to do with a feeling of beautiful calm that seems so typical of this area. The birds add to it but are not primary. It was trying to orchestrate all this that caused me to do the reeds over and over again, especially trying to make the back ones seem less important than the front ones.
The frame is simple pine lattice. It doesn't look great. But to me it looks better than almost any frame I can buy! For some this may seem hard to believe. But it's true. There are times when ornate frames look appropriate and actually add to the work. But I've always used lattice to frame my large abstract paintings. It's cheap but it also does what I want: put a simple edge to the painting that differentiates it from the background wall. When I switched to naturalistic painting I found that I wanted the same thing for my acrylic paintings. This it not true for my watercolors or prints, where I think the combination of mat and fairly simple frame work to set off the art and give it it's own little world to live in. But for acrylics I still think that just enough wood to give the painting an edge looks best. If I had more time though I would have preferred mitered corners to the butt joint that I used.

Least Tern in Acrylic

When I go birding, especially in a place like Cape May, NJ, where unusual birds are very possible, my goals are to see new birds and to see them well enough to sketch them. That's not to say that in places like Cape May I and my wife don't enjoy just being out in the environment. We do. Much of our birding, whether here or away, is in beautiful places.
We had hoped to see the endangered, and protected, Least Tern during our visit in late April/early May. Through the last day of our trip we still hadn't seen one.But as walked 'The Meadows' on our last night there we saw a smaller tern out on a spit. Sure enough we could see just enough to identify it as a Least Tern.
It was just too far away, even in my scope, to sketch. Instead I took some photos and hoped for the best. They still showed almost nothing to indicate it was a Least Tern. But it did show how small it was compared to the Forster's Terns to its left. And it showed one of the most striking aspects of this area, the bands of water and reed.
I always enjoy this view. It is so indicative of Cape May. I also liked the fact that the photo showed various birds all together in the same environment. This is what you actually see when you're outside, not individual birds, posed as though in a photographer's studio. As much as I like to show the beauty of birds I like to do it with them in a recognizable environment, not in the equivalent of a photographers studio.
This is on a 9x12 inch canvas. I'm not sure how much more I'll work on it. I have gone back and forth on the two bands of reeds four or five times. At some point all of the shapes, colors and sense of light will look good to me, or at least as good as I think I'm capable of doing. The birds will remain loosely defined. But that is the way that they really are at that distance. I do like the fact that this looks pretty much just like what you might see at 'The Meadows' in late spring.

Savannah Sunset

No,I've never been to Savannah, let alone seen a sunset there. The title refers to a handsome Savannah Sparrow seen at sunset at the top of the dunes at 'The Meadows' at Cape May, NJ last November. At that time most everything is in shadow with light just focused on small areas. In this case it was this Savannah Sparrow, with a bit of a yellowish wash caused by the sunset and everything else in purplish-blue shadows.

I didn't do any field sketches then. It was cold since it was November and the wind always whips off the ocean as you cross the dune. But the scene was striking, both the sparrow who is always handsome, like a refined Song Sparrow, and the play of light and dark. So I took a number of photos. I've looked at them many times wondering about doing a painting based on one. But something's always put me off. Maybe the cliche of sunlit focal point and purplish-blue shadows. Today however I couldn't resist a quick, small watercolor.

Like the last one of the bluebird this is done on the tiny 5x8.5 inch pages of the Moleskine watercolor sketchbook.

Cold Water Diversion

Sometimes when I know that I won't really have more than 30 minutes or so to devote to a painting I flip through the many bird photos I've taken and something will strike my fancy. I don't yet have enough field studies to do the same with them but I hope that will happen soon.

This sometimes results in surprising subject choices. Today's painting is a sunset, something I've never liked, even when I lived on the Pacific Ocean in San Francisco. I'm not fond of sunsets or artworks based on them though for different reasons. In nature I find sunsets somewhat melancholy. In art they're most often cliched, or at least they strike me that way.

Nonetheless a sunset photo of one of the ponds at 'The Meadows' at Cape May caught my eye a few days ago. We often visit Cape May in October and by the time the sun sets at The Meadows it's pretty cool. Often the water just looks plain cold! But since I've been veering off from birds a bit recently I decided to use it as a subject. There are Mute Swans and Great Egrets in the picture as well as a few unidentified ducks. But the subject is really water, light and sky.

These are all parts of the environment of many bird scenes so I decided to go ahead and try to paint them, just as with the trees, mountains and sky of my last post. I continue to try to learn more about painting in watercolor, both in technique and in subject matter.

So that's the explanation of my 'sunset painting', probably the first I've ever done in my long career. As I did it I was reminded of an event when I was probably 10-12 years old. I'd been doing art for awhile and thought I had some talent. Then I visited an older cousin who showed me his painting of a sailboat in the water at sunset, complete with reflection, blues, pinks, yellows. I was devastated. I knew I had never done anything that good and probably never would. The illusion of light was a revelation! I doubt I'd feel that way now. More likely I'd just say: 'Oh, another formulaic sunset. Look at those predictable pink highlights.' But at the time it indicated a level of sophistication in art I never even thought possible.

So there you have it: my first sunset. More than a sunset though I'm trying to capture some sense of the coldness of that scene. It was beautiful in its way, but really more a scene of hard coldness than anything else. I think this gets some of that. I also have to give credit to Aquabee Super Deluxe Sketchpad here. It's really not meant for developed watercolors. But I worked for three days on this and it's still in one piece, though a bit warped.

One more thought: you might ask why a 30 minute painting took 3 days to complete? Well I didn't expect that it would. But once I started I decided that I didn't want to use broad brushstrokes for either the water or the hills. So they were done slowly with many small strokes. As the painting developed I then used a broader brush to unite some areas. But everything began with the slow work of small brushes. I have tendency to use a 'broad brush'. But sometimes I regret the lack of detail. So I started with a small brush and many brushstrokes on this one.

Below is another photo of the watercolor. It's off center but the colors are a bit truer.

1 of 1600

Please don't take this as gospel truth. The figure 1 of 1600 refers to the number of pairs of Piping Plovers on the East Coast of the U.S. It was a rough figure given to us by a field biologist at 'The Meadows' of The Nature Conservancy in Cape May, NJ. Further research online found an estimate of less than 2000 nesting pairs in 2008. Wikipedia says the total world population in 2003 was about 6410. So I don't know a hard and fast figure.

Nonetheless I hope my point is clear: in this small watercolor you are looking at only one of 1600 such bird pairs in existence on the East Coast and two out of a total population of 6410. They are rare, threatened, and special. How often can you look at something whose existence is so severely threatened? What should be done about it?

I won't go on about the ethics of this. I try to avoid such big questions on this blog. So all I will say is that I think it is a great mistake to let any species disappear, especially through neglect.

In talking to the biologist last week I and my wife expected that we would find that the greatest threat to the newborn plover chicks would be human. But that's not the case. Here Laughing Gulls and even Ghost Crabs are greater predators. Nature is complex and things aren't always what they seem. In terms of overall threat to all Piping Plovers I'm sure that loss of beach habitat is at or near the top.

Because Piping Plovers are almost impossible to see when they are not moving we were very fortunate to find them running around all over the beach like windup toys on our first day at Cape May last week. Photos taken then were the basis of the quick watercolor at the top. The next day we were out with a birding group and it was almost impossible to find the birds because most of the time they were sitting still. They are a tremendous example of protective coloration. If humans can't see them then neither can many of their predators.



If the Piping Plovers are an example of 1 in 1600 Heislerville Wildlife Management Area showed the opposite, let's say 1600 of 1600 shorebirds in flight all at the same time. When we first arrived at Matt's Landing at Heislerville last week we saw a number of shorebirds standing in shallow water amidst thousands of small brown, rounded rocks. It was only when I focused my scope on the 'rocks' that I realized that they were birds! Almost all of them were dunlins.

When the shorebirds fly, as in the photo above, they create the equivalent of an optical illusion. There is an explosion of flickering movement, light and shadow. It is really an extraordinary experience. More extraordinary, on a less visceral level, is the knowledge that here, in contrast to the Piping Plovers, you are experiencing nature's profusion. Though again this is misleading. I'm not an expert on shorebirds. In fact I'm pretty new to them. But my guess is that the birds seen here, dunlins, short-billed dowitchers, black-bellied plovers, semi-palmated plovers, semi-palmated sanderlings and greater yellowlegs are also in decline. So unfortunately the sense of profusion is somewhat false. There is no denying the number of birds seen. And it is thrilling to see them, as they stop briefly here on their way to the Arctic tundra to breed. But they are far fewer than they were in the past. Still it was a tremendous sight to see.

One of the extraordinary aspects of Cape May, NJ for birders is that there are so many different birds in different habitats. So although I've talked mainly about shorebirds in this post, we also saw warblers, other passerines, hawks, ducks and other birds in great numbers. This is good and bad. The good is the experience of nature's profusion. The bad is the realization that forces such as geography funnel birds to the Cape May area so that you see an abnormal representation of the bird population. But my feeling, like most others I imagine, is to be thankful that we can take advantage of it. For anybody who does wish to bird the Cape May area I'd highly recommend 'Birds and Birding at Cape May' by Clay and Pat Sutton. And if you're there don't miss the walks given by the Cape May Bird Observatory. As a woman we directed to the CMBO walk at Heislerville told us afterwards: "That was the best six dollars I ever spent!"

I brought along my art materials but didn't have time to do anything but take photos. So I'm sure I'll be posting a lot of new work based on them. But I also intend to make a greater effort to do more work from life. One thing that hit me as I looked through all the photographs I took is that, though I liked many of them, even the ones I liked looked like, well......., photographs! They do not look like what I saw. For that there's art!