Another Thanksgiving Osprey Along the Wissahickon

Osprey with Fish at Valley Green. Linocut by Ken Januski.

Juvenile Osprey Along Wissahickon on Thanksgiving Day, 2014. Photo by Ken Januski.

Osprey with Fish at Valley Green, 2010. Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

Juvenile Osprey Along Wissahickon on Thanksgiving Day, 2014. Photo by Ken Januski.

I know I've talked a lot about Osprey in recent posts. That's for a couple of reasons: 1, we enjoy seeing them especially in November along the Wissahickon in Philadelphia, PA; 2, e-bird from Cornell Labs seems to think this is unusual; and 3, yesterday I finished a new linocut, one that was first begun, then abandoned four years ago.

At top you see the new linocut. It's based on the sketch done from life over four years ago. I abandoned it soon after I started because it seemed too clunky and primitive. But when I ran across it recently I liked it. So I reworked it, first with color  as I illustrated in an earlier post. When that didn't work out I made minor modifications and printed it in a small edition of six. One of them is at top.  I had thought we'd seen this Osprey on Thanksgiving but that actually was another one. This one was seen on 11.15.10.

I finished it on Wednesday. Today we went out to walk along the Wissahickon before cooking our Thanksgiving meal. When we first started this 15-20 years ago we saw a Pileated Woodpecker, a relatively rare bird for us at the time. So each Thanksgiving, and Christmas, we go out with the hope of seeing another.

More recently though we've seen something that actually is rare, at least according to e-bird, for this time of year, an Osprey. That was what we hoped to see today. And sure enough we did. Two of the best photos of the 60 plus that I took are above. This juvenile Osprey did not move from this position, except to change direction, in 30  minutes! Often I've hardly begun to sketch him or remove the lens cap from the camera before he's gone. The one, actually probably this one, that we saw a couple of weeks ago flew by and gave us all of 3-5 seconds to view him.

I'm including the last photo because it was illustrates an aha moment. We saw him most of the time with his back to us. What was striking was how short his tail was. As you can see his wings extend far beyond the tail. The overall shortness is due to foreshortening. But the relative length of the wings is no surprise when you consider what they look like in flight - very long wings. But it took us both awhile to reconcile that with the seemingly very short tail.

Among the many, many things we have to be thankful for is the Wissahickon and the wildlife that inhabit it. If you watch the news as we do, it seems like just about the entire world is 'fed up and not going to take it anymore'. I blame this partially on talk-radio and web sites, particularly news sites, that allow unbridled and unedited ranting. Everyone can now rant endlessly, and often anonymously .In any case most people actually have a lot to be thankful for if they think about it. This is all the more obvious when you see Ebola victims in Africa, terrorist victims anywhere, and the poor people of Syria, to name just a very, very few.

Osprey and Goldfinch Prints in Progress

Osprey with Fish at Valley Green. Proof of multi-block Linocut by Ken Januski.

Experience is absolutely necessary in order to learn all that may be done with one's own instrument of expression, and more especially to avoid what should not even be attempted. When a man is immature he plunges into all kinds of senseless experiments, and by attempting to force his art to yield more than it either can or should concede, he fails to reach even a small degree of superiority within the bounds of what is possible... Only fools and weaklings torture themselves by trying to achieve the impossible.

And yet we need to be very bold. Without daring, without extreme daring even, there is no beauty...

Eugene Delacroix, The Journal of Eugene Delacroix, translated by Hubert Wellington, published by Phaidon Press, entry for Sunday July 21, 1850.

So ... to put it briefly, I hope I'm being bold and not foolish and weak by experimenting as I am with the two prints shown here. Above is a linocut that I abandoned about four years ago. It was based on a field sketch I did of an Osprey seen at Valley Green, along the Wissahickon in Philadelphia on November 15, 2010.

I stumbled upon it by accident recently. As I recall I decided it just looked too clunky and primitive for my tastes. But now I find something appealing in it so I'm reviving it. Out of curiosity I printed the image on the back of the mounted linoleum and carved away the pressed wood backing where the Osprey would print. I then used a rolled blend, something I've never tried, onto the pressed wood surface, not the most inviting surface in the world.

Well as you can see it didn't really respond well to being inked. And yet it did give some color, which is really all that I wanted, to serve as a backdrop for the black linoleum print. This is a proof. Most likely I'll do some more carving on the linoleum, getting rid of a lot of gouge marks and probably just print in one color, black. But only time will tell.

American Goldfinch on Thistle. Proof of multi-block Woodcut by Ken Januski.

I started the Osprey print today after printing the proof above for the Goldfinch woodblock. I'm trying to figure out how much of the yellow to keep. Since most of the first proof is yellow, whatever I carve away will stay yellow.

American Goldfinch on Thistle. Proof of multi-block Woodcut by Ken Januski.

Most likely the last printing will be the black from the first side of the woodblock. As I continue adding colors I'll need to carve away much of the black so that it doesn't overprint as it does here. But I proof it continually at points like this just to get some idea of what it might look like, and what I might lose forever if I cut it away now. Most likely there won't be much black left when I finally print that block on top of everything else. But that stage is still quite a ways away. One thing I would like to get, and I think I have it to some degree in the proof without the black, is a fairly bright print, just like my recollection of the goldfinch on the thistle.

Painting with Crayons

Wood Ducks, Mallard and Canada Geese at Valley Green. Crayon and wash by Ken Januski

Wood Ducks, Mallard and Canada Geese. Pencil sketch by Ken Januski

Once warblers arrive it's easy to convince myself that I ought to go out and look for them even if there are a million other things I should be doing. That happened yesterday. And of course, outside of three singing Louisiana Waterthrushes, they were nowhere to be seen. The highlight of the day was an Osprey sailing up and down the Wissahickon, calling in his full throated voice as he went. I say 'sailing' deliberately. The wind was so strong that he went by as though shot out of an arrow, twisting and turning with the curves of the stream itself.

I brougth both my Moleskine and Stillman and Birn sketchbooks. As I said last post I'm in the habit of using the Moleskine for ballpoint pen field sketches. When I took up wildlife art I pretty much thought that's what defined a 'field sketch.' And to a large extent that's true.

But I also found myself really admiring the more compositional sketches of a few wildlife artists, often done in the field as well. The problem with field sketches that just try to understand and portray the bird by itself is that they present a problem when used as the basis for a painting. How do you compose it? What goes in the background, the foreground? What are the colors, the light?

That's something that more compositional studies can accomplish. I decided that this might be a very good use of the Stillman and Birn sketchbooks. So yesterday I brought along a small 5.5x8.5. Zeta sketchbook. It was hardbound so I knew that could open it and use  it as one 8.5x11 sheet.

Since I'd seen few birds along the way, and since there were up to 30 handsome Wood Ducks, all at Valley Green I decided to sit down on one of the benches and at least work up a pencil sketch. None of these birds ever appeared as they do in the sketch above. I started with the foreground Canada Goose, then moved on to two different Wood Ducks and placed them behind him, then added a distant goose to his left, Finally I added the female Mallard that floated by later.

This type of compositional study is something that I greatly enjoy. In some ways it exemplifies the very center of art, especially natural art: creating something new out of things actually seen. It emphasizes creativity.

I'm not saying that this is a great 'creation.' I did the pencil sketch on site and then added crayon and wash in my studio over the last two days. I thought I was finished last night but when I looked at the photo I'd taken I saw that all the values seemed to be the same. In particular I thought it would be better to make the foreground darker than the background. This is the type of compositional decision that I think involves another type of artistic creativity.

The quintessential medium for this type of creativity is I think oil or acrylic, mainly because they allow endless variation, modification, fine-tuning. And that's the nature of the title of this post. I really do think that using these Caran d'Ache Neocolor II crayons allows as much flexibility and modification is as possible on a paper surface, outside of actually painting on paper. I think that's one thing I find so exciting about using them on the sturdy Stillman and Birn paper. I can get much closer to painting, and all the artistic fine-tuning that that implies, without actually using paint on canvas.

So that's why I call this post 'Painting with Crayons.' This process gets very close to painting. And for me it gives me the chance to try out small paintings. In that sense this is a true sketchbook inthe original use of the term - a tool in which ideas can be tried out.

I've often liked artists drawings more than their paintings. Rembrandt is a prime instance of this. They show the individuality, creativity, rawness of an artist without a lot of cleaning up to make presentable for the buying public. I think that's still pretty much true today. I often prefer the sketches of wildlife artists to their paintings. An exception I can think of right off is Bob Kuhn, mainly because his paintings don't have a high finish. They keep some of the raw power of sketches, and they make artistic composition as important as nature itself.

It's the ease with which I can make artistic compostional and color decisions with the crayons and the Zeta sketchbook that make me so happy with them as working method for art. Finally I should add that I'd never make a finished painting based completely on the sketch above. There's too much that I'm unhapy with. But it is enough for me to picture a painting in my minds eye, and think about how I might change it to make an actual painting. That's incredibly valuable. After I'd posted this I realized that another version might be good for this Saturday's demo, listed at upper right of this page. I won't have time to do a drawing and use crayons to color it so I've been planning to have the sketch done in advance. This is a variation on the crayon sketch, but this time done with the benefit of reference photos. It's done on Stillman and Birn Delta paper, at a largish 9x12 size. Something I've mentioned before but is worth repeating is that this paper erases beautifully.

The Snowy Squeal of Spring

First Wood Ducks of Sprigng - Eating Snow. Watercolor by Ken Januski

 

Once I start seeing new birds, or hearing about others seeing new birds, every day presents a temptation to go out. I can exercise, sketch, bird all at the same time. Today wasn't all that inviting but I'd remembered seeing a very early Eastern Phoebe along the Wissahickon last year and decided it was worth a try, even with a weather forecast of rain and flurries.

The flurries started almost as soon as I got there. But all it did was make the day more beautiful. Snow always quiets the environment but it does so particularly in a natural setting and even moreso along a stream. In this weather the stream seems to belong to the wildlife not the human visitors.

Part way along I heard a familiar squeal - that of the Wood Duck. Though a few had overwintered in the swan pond of Morris Arboretum I hadn't yet seen any along the Wissahickon, nor heard their squeal.

As I made my way to Valley Green the two grew to at least 13. The snow came down harder and this female couldn't resist snapping out at a flake.

As soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to give it a try in paint. Without the looseness of yesterday's Killdeer painting I doubt I would have tried this. How in the world was I going to render the falling snow, the extreme darkness of the water, the snowflake? I think yesterday convinced me not to worry about it and just improvise.

The Best Way to Bird...

is to just sit still. I had to think of this today as I was talking to two friends and an Osprey came up quietly behind us, landed, and stayed at least 15 minutes as we continued our conversation. When they left I took up sketching him and he probably stayed for another ten minutes, always on the same branch.

It's amazing how often this happens. I'd seen very few birds in 90+ minutes of walking and almost all of them the Canada Geese and Mallards in the sketch above. Then we started talking and the Osprey appeared. A Sharp-shinned Hawk also quietly flew in and landed near us while we talked. Meanwhile a Turkey Vulture kept circling the Osprey, getting closer each time before finally drifting off.

In any case it just proves, to me anyway, that often the best way to bird is to just sit still and let the birds come to you. In the case of the Mallards and Canada Geese they are almost always there at Valley Green, primarily looking for free handouts I think. But there's something pleasant about just watching and sketching them and their world, especially on a day as beautiful as today.

Snow Today, Gone Tomorrow

Oddly enough the snow I painted yesterday is completely gone today. There's good and bad to this. Our yard is not as scenic. But it is a little bit easier to go out for a walk. We normally take a Christmas walk but cold and constant rain prevented that this year.

Today though we headed out to the Wissahickon. Though in a valley, where ice and snow often doesn't melt, at least 90% of the snow was gone. So we had an easy, though somewhat sloppy walk.

The great surprise was that it was warm enough to sit down on the benches at Valley Green and do some field sketching. Who would have thought we could sit comfortably and sketch Canada Geese just a week after 24 inches of snow and weather in the 20s?

As I said it was a great treat. There's always something enjoyable about working in the studio. There's greater artistic freedom, more artistic license. And I love that. But it's also nice to be outside drawing what is right in front of you.

The watercolor was done in the studio based on one of the two field sketches. It's another 15-30 minute sketch. I got a bit sloppy with the heads and lost the white markings that should be there. But I did manage to get in much of the landscape and water. That's what I intended in the drawing and it's what I tried to keep in the sketch.

There's much to be said for portraits of birds. But all in all for me, I'd prefer to show them in their environment, even if they might lose their pride of place. In any case that was the intent in these quick works.

Valley Green in Pastel

After sleeping on it I decided to go back into yesterday's pastel of Canada Goose, Graylag and Mallard at Valley Green. Though I really liked the white undeveloped area something told me that I ought to keep developing it just to see what it looked like. There was also the possibility that I was afraid to ruin a good start with continued work. So that is always the dilemma: are you quitting because it really is done or because you fear ruining a good start? The answer is never clear, certainly not to me anyway!

By the way this is more or less exactly the way the geese and mallard were grouped. Because the Valley Green section of Wissahickon Creek is accessible by car it gets a lot of visitors. So the geese and ducks just hang out, waiting for handouts.

But I'm happy with it and happy I continued work on it. At the same time I do have an almost visceral reaction to works that seem too finished, at least if they are my own work. So I'm sure this dilemma will not go away

Sketching Ducks and Geese Live

There is a popular spot along the Wissahickon Creek in Philadelphia that includes a restaurant, parking, lots of people, and a quiet stretch of water. The quietness would attract ducks and geese to begin with but the addition of families throwing out bread to feed them makes it particularly attractive to them. This is Valley Green.

It's about 10 minutes away by car and I've been hoping to get up early enough to head over there and get an hour's drawing done from life before heading off to work. I did that today and the results are above. Subjects are primarily Canada Geese, Mallards, and stray pigeon or grackle. All are done from life without benefit of scope or binoculars. I used pencil with a bit of watercolor pencil and waterbrush.

All in all I'm pleased with them, especially the geese and the lone mallard. Probably more than anything they convince me of the tremendous possibilities in working from life.