Sketching and Beautiful Weather

Young Downy and Hairy Woodpeckers with Ruby-throated Hummingbird. Ballpoint Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

We've seen beautiful late September weather here the last few days. But wait, it's only late July! I read recently that this may presage another long and brutal winter like last year's. If so we may regret this weather then but for now there's nothing to do but revel in it. And because of that I've found that each day I tell myself I have to be outside sketching rather than in the studio working on that woodcut that I started a few days ago.

Above is the work from today. On the left an immature Hairy Woodpecker with a Downy Woodpecker beneath him. The Downy was almost all white from this perspective with just a bit of black around eye and on underside of tail. The lack of black, esp. around eye made me think he also was an immature.

I've continued to spend a lot of time watching the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds that have been visiting our backyard. On the right side above are three drawings from today, the smallest of which was done from memory after he hovered two feet away from me for a few seconds. All too soon the hummingbirds will be gone so I'm really trying to take advantage of them while they're here. Oh yes, the bill of the hummingbird on lower left looks a bit odd because he's sticking out his tongue! I love being able to get such seemingly unusual behavior down in a sketchbook though I doubt that it's really all that unusual.

Eastern Kingbird, Question Mark Butterfly and Great Blue Heron in Field. Ballpoint Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

The drawings above were done at Morris Arboretum, though I think on different days. The Eastern Kingbird didn't stay for long so there's a lot of memory used in this drawing. Beneath him a Red Admiral that stayed for a few seconds, though not enough for me to get everything down. On the right one of three immature Great Blue Herons that were at Morris yesterday. I got a kick out of this one in the field. He was sketched live and some of the landscape was done at the same time. The rest of the landscape was improvised over the last 24 hours.

Before I move on to the delayed Green Heron woodcut I wanted to mention John Busby. After I posted the last post I realized that John Busby's most recent book, Looking at Birds: An Antidote to Field Guides, is the perfect book to encourage drawing encounters with birds, even if you just get the briefest of sketches. As I googled for the exact title of the book just now I ran across a video of John Busby sketching on the web site of author and artist John Muir Laws. When I posted this yesterday I hadn't yet had time to watch the full 24 minutes of the video. But today, a day later, I have. It is spectacular. About minute 15 or 16 he sits amid hundreds of gannets and mentions how he could never do a glorified portrait of one of them, in spite of their beauty. Take a look at most bird art shows and catalogs and that's all you'll see - glorified portraits, made possible only through photography. John Busby is interested in the full experience of seeing the birds and not just the birds but the birds in their environment. Towards the end he says that he thinks his goal might be for the viewer to wish he'd been there. And in that he succeeds. A far, far more lofty and worthwhile goal than all those deadly glorified portraits!!  And who knows what else you might find of interest on Laws' site.

Crouching Green Heron. Second Proof of Woodcut by Ken Januski.

Okay, back to the woodcut. I've done some minimal cleanup in the heron woodcut. I've also copied this onto a second block so that I can use at least one more color if I feel like it. Time will tell. I want to keep this pretty simple. I was really only trying to catch the striking pose. But once I printed it the pattern of the wood came out in the background and now I'm tempted to keep it, which of course is threatening to send the woodcut off in a different direction. I hope it rains soon so I can figure out what to do.

Crouching Green Heron in Many Media

Crouching Green Heron. Woodcut First Proof by Ken Januski.

I started this small 4x6 inch woodcut today. This is a very early proof. At this point I don't even know if I'll use more than one block each in a different color, turn it into a reduction woodcut in numerous colors, or just leave it as one black woodcut.

It's based on the field sketch below. Hard to believe perhaps? I was walking along the Manayunk Canal on one of the recent refreshingly cool early mornings. I was greeted by a rabbit. A bit later I saw a Green Heron crouched down looking for food. I was struck by the way he lifted his feet while in this crouching position. Of course he didn't hold the pose long and the sketch below gets the feet somewhat correct but drastically misplaces the head.  Still if I hadn't done it I probably wouldn't have pursued any artwork based on it. At the bottomis  a Great Blue Heron. In it I was trying to study his bill more than anything else.

Rabbit, Green Heron, Great Blue Heron. Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

I had my trusty Panasonic Lumix FZ28 camera with me. It has a video function that I didn't even notice until after I'd had the camera three or four years. I still rarely remember to use it and I'd hate to come to rely on it. But in this case I thought it might be good for capturing how the heron lifted his feet. Me and Eadweard_Muybridge together again! My guess is that I wouldn't be so fond of the videos I occasionally take if they were taken by anybody than myself, that is there is probably nothing special about them. But I do still get the biggest kick out of seeing birds, especially herons and shorebirds as they pursue food. I sometimes wonder if it's not like a child seeing his first cartoon.

The sketch below combines what I saw in the video with my original field sketch and with a couple of other photos I took. It was meant as a template for the woodcut at top. After I'd scanned it into the computer and reversed it so that I could copy it on to the wood block I realized that the bill was too short. So I modified the drawing on the woodblock to account for that.

Crouching Green Heron. Pencil Sketch by Ken Januski.

I also saw a Killdeer, well actually two, in the same area as the Green Heron. I was happy with this field sketch. It's probably the best field sketch I've ever done of a Killdeer. And I was also somewhat happy with the Gray Catbird below. On the same trip I noticed the curve of the lower bill and tried to capture that. Nice sketches I thought! But then as I sat in the backyard yesterday afternoon a Ruby-throated Hummingbird visited our Monarda. I used my new extreme close focus binoculars to watch him and try to sketch him. I particularly noticed the big eye with white area behind, and also the surprising thickness and darkness of the bill. I think I captured most of that. But then I tried to portray the humming wings. Oh well. That part is pretty unsuccessful.

As I was doing this a Northern Cardinal was just about to land in an Arbor Vitae 5 feet away from me. So there he was stretched out, his landing gear, i.e. feet, dropped and in position to land when he saw me. Gone! I tried to capture this and did a very bad job. It's at moments like this that I realize that I don't know enough about birds to capture them in surprising but momentary positions. Still if I didn't try I'd never pursue it. And then I'd never learn how to do it. So that's really why I sometimes show these field sketches that look so bad - as an impetus to others to give it a try, and to me to pursue it.

Killdeer, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Gray Catbird, Northern Cardinal. Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

I'll probably do no more work on the woodcut today but I'm hoping it will move along quickly over the next couple of days.

Return to Lino, Video and Field Sketch

Green Heron and Eastern Pondhawk. Linocut Proof by Ken Januski

I've finally returned to lino after a fairly lengthy absence. If I wasn't running short of woodclocks I might have started work on a woodblock rather than a linoleum block. But before I forget about the differences between the two it seemed like a good idea to try linocut once again.

This is about the fourth proof of a 4x6 inch print. Right now it's printed on copier paper. It's also based on a photo I took last year of a Green Heron with an Eastern Pondhawk perched a few feet away. Apparently it was far enough away, or just too small, to catch the heron's interest. If I recall correctly I saw it at the Manayunk Canal.

My original intent here was to cut one block more or less realistically printing primarily black outlines. Underneath that I would print abstract blocks of color, mainly for the heron and dragonfly.  But as I worked on it I was reminded of my old Osprey linocut with watercolor. It was a very simple, very small print where I painted each print in watercolor after I'd printed the black outline. It's something that I might experiment with here.

That print, along with my print of nine robins, is one of my most popular in terms of sales. My more ambitious prints artistically often seem to do little in the ways of sales. It seems people like their nature art simple. Or perhaps not. In any case I'm tempted to stop work on this soon, print it, and then add watercolor.

Spotted Sandpiper, Killdeer, Great Blue Heron, Canada Gosling. Field Sketches by Ken Januski.

Yesterday I was also at the Manayunk Canal hoping to see a Spotted Sandpiper. I was shocked to read today that no one knew where Spotted Sandpipers built their nests until the early 1900s when someone hunting eggs for a collector noticed an odd looking bird going high into a robin's nest. Of course it wasn't a robin's nest.

In northwest Philadelphia, not a popular shorebird destination, the shorebirds I see most frequently are Solitary Sandpipers, Spotted Sandpipers and of course Killdeer. At first, particularly in fall, Jerene and I had a hard time separating out the two tail-bobbing shorebirds, the Spotted and the Solitary. But over time I've realized that the Solitary is far more elegant, and the Spotted, at times looks almost comical.

He does look a bit comical I confess in my field sketch above but that's because I made the head far too large for the body. In real life he seems comical both for his quick movements and for the way he moves his legs. The closest analogy I can think of is Groucho Marx when he crouches down low and takes long strides. Recently I saw such a Spotted Sandpiper combining these two movements - long low strides with very quick movements - along some rocks on a tributary of the Wissahickon at Morris Arboretum. It was almost unbelievable and I wished that I had my camera with me so that I could capture it on video.

Since Spotteds seem to frequent the canal I was hoping to find one yesterday. As I looked at and sketched a Killdeer  I noticed other movement, closer to me. When I put down my binoculars I realized that it was a Spotted Sandpiper. So I've included a short video below. Oddly enough my relatively inexpensive point and shoot camera is good at taking videos, at least in my estimation. When we saw the Scissor-tailed Flycatcher in Philadelphia last year and I was taking a video another birder with a much more expensive camera said he thought mine was actually easier to use when taking videos. Who knows? In any case I've found it handy on those rare occasions when I wanted to take a video.

I think it's interesting to compare the visual technologies at work in this post. The most primitive of course, is drawing from life. Though the proportions are off in the Spotted Sandiper I love the sense of life in the drawings. I couldn't resist trying to capture the Canada Goose gosling as it tried to walk, all the while of course trying to avoid the accompanying goose poop, a reason that Canada Geese are not all that popular. The linocut, at least in the rough way I do it, is almost equally primitive. And then of course there is the much more modern video. They all have their place. But as you know it's the first two that are my favorites.