Practicing the Warbler Scales

Black-throated Blue Warblers. Wash Drawing by Ken Januski.

Black-throated Green Warblers. Wash Drawing by Ken Januski.
 

Anyone who has followed this blog for awhile knows how I've struggled with portraying New World Wood Warblers, the ones most North Americans know as plain old warblers. I've been noting when the First of Season ones arrive in fall. As I did so I noticed that most of them first arrived about May 1st of this year. And a great number are now migrating back south starting about September 1st. A few arrive both earlier and later but as a general rule it seems to be May 1 and September 1.

Who cares? Well most birders do and I think that most people given the opportunity to actually see one of these birds before it flies out of sight would as well. They are among the most beautiful birds in the world as far as I can tell. Certainly they are among the most colorful. I think it is that color combined with the knowledge that they're hardly here before they're gone that makes them so appealing.

When I'm out birding most people have a hard time even getting a good look at migrating warblers. (This is less true for those who live where warblers breed. But still they don't normally stand still and pose for anyone). A few people will try to photograph them. But very, very few will try to draw or paint them from life.

And yet that's when they are most themselves, flitting from place to place, generally looking for an insect snack. To try to portray them without somehow portraying some of the excitement of seeing them seems almost contradictory. To paint them in the studio seems a bit like admiring the dead butterflies in a collection without ever actually going outside to see them.

To make a long story short I've tried to draw them from life for about 8 years now. I've gone from such abysmal failure that I gave up instantly and went for the camera to my current state of about 50% of the time sketching or looking and trying to memorize their structure and 50% or less taking photos. Today's first of season Black-throated Blue found me sketching and looking over 80% of the time I'd guess and taking photos about 20%. With all the photos that I already have there's no great reason to spend any time taking any more.

And yet my efforts today in sketching are quite disappointing. As were my experiences last week trying to use wash drawings for warblers from photos. But I did pursue it last week and got some halfway hopeful wash drawings of Black-throated Green Warblers. Today I decided to try the same method with Black-throated Blue Warblers. Both pages are sketchy and tentative, nowhere near or as sure-footed as my shorebird sketches of last week. Still I think that practicing the warbler scales is finally starting to pay off.

I'm beginning to get a feel for warblers I think, so that they actually seem like they might be alive regardless of how tentative the actual lines might be. That is what I keep aiming for so that at some time I'll feel like when I portray warblers I'm actually giving them their just due. They've been gone for four months. And now they're back for a few weeks. Then they'll be gone until next May, a time too long to contemplate!

A Day Without Warblers

Bay-breasted Warbler. Watercolor by Ken Januski.

Black and White Warbler. Watercolor by Ken Januski.



Black-throated Green Warbler. Watercolor by Ken Januski.

Black-throated Green Warbler. Watercolor by Ken Januski

Baltimore Oriole et al. Field Sketch by Ken Januski

After all the warblers of Magee Marsh, seen with very little obfuscating foliage, it's been quite a change to return to my local Philadelphia haunts and find that the few warblers that are here are often extremely high and/or hidden by extensive foliage. Each day out reminds me of the saying about a day without wine being like a day without sunshine. Or perhaps a day without jazz is like a day without sunshine as a public radio station in Kentucky used to say. I feel like I'm going through warbler withdrawal.

But there have been some warblers and also other first of season or first of year birds for Philadelphia. It's been a treat to see familiar thrushes, flycatchers and orioles again. Many of them will remain here and nest. The field sketch immediately above shows some of the local birds, a not quite local Chestnut-sided Warbler seen from more or less straight underneath, a House Finch at feeder, a mystery flycatcher that turned out to be an Acadian, and a Baltimore Oriole.

Each year I promise myself to be a bit more discriminating in the art I show on this blog and elsewhere. My intent it so show more finished work and less working sketches, often of not the best quality. But guess what? It's easier said than done, this producing finished quality work idea.

I've struggled for the last week with small watercolor sketches in my Stillman and Birn 5.5x8.5 Gamma sketchbook. These are all based on photos from Magee, the things I took after I'd done some field sketches. The sketchbooks themselves are fine.

But most of the sketches leave something if not a lot to be desired, especially when you consider the beauty of the birds when seen live.  And of course there is size. I had one Black-throated Green land within a hand's reach of me. At that close range you see how delicate and really tiny they are. All the more reason to pursue my ongoing goal of doing them justice in paint. I've seen thousands of illustrations of warblers. I've seen exceedingly few successful paintings of them.

I recently read a post elsewhere about watercolor not actually being hard. But it is. It is exceedingly hard. It's only easy if you really don't understand how great watercolor can be, for instance in the work of Winslow Homer or John Singer Sargent, both of whose work is full of light and life. If you only use watercolor to fill in areas with color that is something else again. It still requires skill I think. But it completely ignores the sense of transparency and light which in my humble opinion is the only reason to even use watercolor.

A Democracy of Birders

Bay-breasted Warbler and other birds. Field sketch by Ken Januski.

American Redstart and other birds. Field sketch by Ken Januski.

 

Horned Lark and other birds. Field sketch by Ken Januski.

 



Magnolia Warbler and other birds. Field sketch by Ken Januski.

 

Prothonotary Warbler and other birds. Field sketch by Ken Januski.

 

I had a hard time deciding on a title for this post about field sketches of birds seen at Magee Marsh in Ohio last week. The most notable thing I think for just about anyone who was there was the number of birds, though there was in fact one very quiet day. For me the high point might have been when a woman who had wandered up to watch me sketch a Blackburnian Warbler from life said something like "You've made my day. This is even better than the birds, especially with all these cameras." What she meant I think was how refreshing it was to see someone sketching and by inference interacting with the birds amidst all the people with their cameras, and whirring motor drives, and flashes, and big lenses, and big tripods.

Since I value field sketching so highly it was easy to make that the title of this post. Instead though I chose "A Democracy of Birders." I did this because I think it is interesting philosophically. It is very easy to get frustrated at Magee Marsh this time of year, perhaps even more so during The Biggest Week in American Birding , an organized event that has gone on for about the last 10 days there. It surely adds to the crowds.

Between rude and oblivious photographers who think nothing of plunking their huge tripods in the middle of the boardwalk and then planting their 200 plus pound selves behind them so that no one can get through and drivers who have to stop for every Canada gosling on the causeway to the boardwalk turning each two minute trip into at least a ten minute trip it's easy to get frustrated. But I think most people feel it's well worth the frustrations because of the wealth of birds to be seen, most at such close range that most people can only dream about.

If you listen to the conversations you soon realize that the level of skill and experience is almost infinite, from the most expert to the most beginning and everywhere in between. And as far as I can tell the excitement and joy of seeing so many birds so close, most of them neo-tropical migrants, makes up for everything else. Barriers between old-style birders and technology-loving birders, experienced and inexperienced birders seem to disappear, or at least be greatly sublimated, in the experience of seeing so many striking birds in so many numbers and at such close proximity.

So that's the nature of the title. The last week, The Biggest Week in American Birding, really did show a democracy of birders, a democracy in all its varied and sometimes uncomfortable or even unwelcome( I'm thinking of big lenses and tripods when I say this) diversity.

The diversity of birds however was as welcome as could be. So from the top I'll enumerate the birds portrayed. They are only some of the many we saw.

Page one: Blue-winged Warbler and Yellow-throated Vireo, actually seen here before the trip, and a Bay-breasted Warbler on left and a Nashville Warbler, Chestnut-sided Warbler and American Woodcock on right.

Page two: Red-eyed Vireo, and a distant sparrow viewed through scope and finally identified as the familiar Swamp Sparrow on left, and male American Redstart, Rose-breasted Grosbeak and head of an American Woodcock on right.

Page three: singing Yellow Warbler and subtly beautiful Warbling Vireo on left and Horned Lark and Least Sandpiper on right.

Page four: Least Flycatcher, Magnolia Warbler and horrible rendering of Sandhill Crane in flight on left and Black-throated Blue Warbler and Ovenbird on right.

Finally on page five: Black-throated Green Warbler and Northern Parula on left and Blackburnian Warbler and Prothonotary Warbler on the right.

Given the plethora of some of the world's most beautiful birds all within close range it's hard to know what to do: enjoy them, soak them in, keep staring trying to capture all that's there in your memory, take photos, sketch. Though I've always tried to do field sketches when you have this seemingly once in a lifetime opportunity it's easy to try to preserve it in film. I'm sure that explains much of the sense of camera-driven birders. But my own experience is that the results are always lacking in emotional resonance. Even on this trip I succumbed to taking quite a few photos. But when I did I was no longer engaged with the bird.

To get around this I started off each day sketching. Only when I'd done a satisfactory sketch or felt it was such a rare view of a bird did I take the camera out of its case and start shooting. For myself I have to say it's been tremendously satisfying not just to see these birds but also have these sketches of them. I just wish I could stay there for a month or so to truly do them justice.

Some Ink Sketches

Continuing on with the thought of preparing myself for doing field sketches of wood warblers when they arrive for their brief spring visit I've returned to my photos of them and done some ballpoint pen studies. Above are some Black-throated Greens. Though the most striking thing about these warblers is their color you really can't do justice to that without being able to draw the structure of the bird. Many of these photos were taken at Magee Marsh in Ohio last year where warblers seemed to drip from the trees.

Above are Black-throated Blues. Though we saw many of them at Magee we also see very many here in Philadelphia, especially in the fall. These sketches are all based on photos I took in Philadelphia over the last couple of years.

The striking colors or warblers can almost hypnotize you. I always find that when I try to draw them in the field the thing that has stuck in my mind is a field mark, for example the black throat of either Black-throated warbler. But I don't remember the structure. In fact I don't even SEE it. I'm too struck by the colors and patterns, and of course the fact that the bird has now flown. In any case I hope that these studies might help a small bit in creating a mental imprint on my mind of their structure.

I do have a better mental image of a Belted Kingfisher. So when I drew one recently in the field with a very long thin bill I knew it was wrong. But that is what I saw so I stayed true to it. But it got me thinking so I did some ballpoint pen studies of them as well, all based on photos I've taken in Philadelphia over the last year or two. I've yet to figure out what made the bill seem so thin. But in looking at my old field sketches I found another similar sketch with a long thin bill. Perhaps it's because his mouth was open, perhaps eating something? I don't know. but something created the illusion of thinness. I'll need to keep investigating. (Well the investigation wasn't very time-consuming. After posting this I was looking through 'The Art of Robert Bateman.' I came across a painting, which I'd seen many times before, called 'Aspen and Kingfisher.' It showed a kingfisher flying with its mouth wide open. In that position the lower mandible in particular looks thin and long, quite unlike the blunt appearance of the entire bill. I believe that most likely it was the open bill that so confused me in my field sketch.)

These sketches are all ballpoint pen as I've mentioned. You might think the finality of ink would be inhibiting. But for me it's much better than the ephemerality of pencil. You never know when your fine, carefully drawn fine lines are going to smudge away to a blur. With ink you're sometimes stuck with a line that is wrong. Your mistakes show. But I think it's easier to cover over them and have lines that stay as you made them than to worry about smudging pencil. It is surprising to find ink such a rewarding medium. I used to draw with India ink and liked it for the same reasons. But I've only recently tried ballpoint pen, thanks mainly to two artists I often see at Birdforum, Alan Dalton and Paschalis Dougalis. More than anything else their work convinced me to give it a try. I'm glad I did.

Working from Murky Photos

I was looking through my sketchbooks yesterday looking for a new subject, most likely for a linocut but possibly for something else. Every time I came across a field sketch of a wood warbler I thought, 'Boy, do they leave a lot to be desired!'

As much as I enjoy doing field sketches, and I really do, I sometimes can be disappointed in their quality. One solution I sometimes try is sketching from photos of the problem bird or species, hoping that I'll learn something in doing so. I'm not sure that this works. If it does it's much more indirect than you might expect. Rather than learning the structure of the bird while wokring from a photo it always seems more likely that I try to copy the patterns of dark and light that I see in the photo. Structure retreats to second place. To me that is what is always so tricky about using photos, and why I generally don't like to do so.

I'd also written recently about the difficulty of knowing what to do when you run into a murky area on a photo of a bird you don't know well. What is the structure beneath the murk? Is an area part of the primary feathers, the rump, the tail? What do you do when an obstruction crosses the middle of the photo? If you know the structure well enough you can either just remove it or paint it without breaking the continuity of the bird. But if you don't know the structure you can end up with a mess. Often I avoid using this type of photo.

So after looking through my sketchbooks yesterday I also looked through some photos. Some of the first I found were of American Redstarts, a beautiful wood warbler. And yet I've never worked from these photos. Why? Because not only were the photos murky the bird itself is murky. The male is a brilliant orange, black and white, with the female replacing the black with brown and the orange with yellow. It's the male that's the problem. When you look at it you mainly see a dark blob with some orange splashes of color. It is very difficult to see the structure of the bird, to even pick out the eye on the black face. So I had murky photos of a murky bird.

No wonder I'd never done any work from these photos. And the photos were taken over numerous times and places. It's just that wood warblers rarely sit still long enough for photos, or particularly for field sketches.

For the first time though I thought I might be familiar enough with the structure of birds and wood warblers in particular to try sketching them, confident that i would know what to do when I reached a murky area in the photo. So that's what you see above. I probably spent two hours or more on these small sketches.

Once I felt that I'd sketched the structure of the birds to the best of my ability I added watercolor. That was another problem. How do you show the structure on a bird that sometimes seems like a black blob? In fact portraying any black bird is difficult. It's easy to have it look flat. It's a far cry from the light breast and clear brown markings of a Song Sparrow. They lend themselves to volume. Black birds lend themselves to flatness.

These are not my best watercolor sketches by far. They're not very fresh looking and they lack detail. But for me anyway they show that it is possible to use murky sources if you have some familiarity with the underlying subject. I doubt I ever would have tried anything from these bad photos if I hadn't spent a lot of time doing field sketches of other birds, especially the elusive wood warblers.

It would be thrilling if this spring was the first time I did some field sketches of wood warblers that I really liked. We'll see. It's still a few months away.

Speaking of Wood Warblers...

they may all be here tomorrow, at least if you live in the NE United States:Monumental Migration. Along with other migrants of course.

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Well it's noon on the day of the predicted fallout. I spent 3 hours at Carpenter's Woods in Philadelphia and found a few birds but not a whole lot more than I would have expected. The best bird was a female Blackburnian 50 feet away and 100 feet up flitting through the leaves. Not much of a view but fortunately it's hard to mistake a Blackburnian. But I almost did. There was another bird in the same area that I and another birder first thought was a Black-throated Green Warbler. About 15 minutes later I sketched the face as I remembered it. The face was bright yellow with dark auriculars.When I got home and checked the field guides though I wondered if it actually could have been the Blackburnian. It also has dark markings around the auriculars. And it was so far away. Finally though I stuck with the Black-throated Green. The color was yellow not yellow-orange and the auricular patch seemed more distinct than in the Blackburnian.

So it was nice to see these but it really wasn't a fallout. Other warblers included another Black-throated Blue feeding on Devil's Walking Stick, a male American Redstart and two Magnolia Warblers, one of them sketched from memory at lower right.. A Eastern Wood Pewee which has been there for weeks if not months was also there and is on top left of sketch. Ruby-throated Hummingbirds have also been regular visitors there and one is included on the sketch.

The most surprising bird was a Broad-winged Hawk. I'm sure that's not so unusual this time of year but because of the wooded nature of Carpenter's Woods you don't see that many. Mainly because you're not looking up at the sky.

All in all a beautiful day and a good day  of birding. But for me it wasn't a fallout day.  I hope it was for others.

Devil's Walkingstick - Nectar of the Migrants

Each year at this time of year I see the value of the American shrub Devil's Walkingstick, also called Hercules Club and Aralia Spinosa. The 'Spinosa' and the 'Devil' give a clue that it is spiky. And yet migrant birds love it. It is a native plant and yet time and time again I read about how it is an invasive that must be eradicated.

I'm not an expert on it. Perhaps it has some hidden noxious qualities I'm unaware of. But I suspect all that prickliness makes in not a 'proper' plant. I'm thinking of keeping track of all the birds I see feeding on it this fall. Today Robins were chasing off some other members of the Thrush family, Wood Thrushes and Veeries. Given the wealth of berries you'd think there wouldn't be a problem with sharing. I've also seen Swainson's Thrushes on it later in the year. Woodpeckers also found it irresistible today. Both a Downy Woodpecker and a Northern Flicker were on them. And, maybe most surprisingly, last year we saw a Pileated on a small 6 foot shrub. I assume they were all eating buries. Most birds get themselves so buried in the plant that it's hard to tell what they're doing.

But my favorite birds that love Devil's Walkingstick are American Wood Warblers. Black -throated Blues in particular love it. If you have this plant around you can almost guarantee finding some Black-throated Blues on it in September and October, if the berries haven't already been eaten. I can't recall all of the other warblers we've seen so I'll keep track this year. I'm pretty sure that Northern Parulas are one of them.

As I've said many times I don't like using photos. They just leave me feeling empty. But I didn't feel like I had time to do anything else today, AND I'm just not sure of what the quality of the art would be.

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The next day: It's been bothering me that I can't find a way to keep track of what birds others see feeding on Devil's Walkingstick. So thanks to Blogger I've created a new blog devoted entirely to that. Please visit and add the birds you've seen as well as your location as a comment.
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That wasn't the case with the 15-minute watercolor above. Yesterday I found at least five different warblers, migrating I'm sure. The high point was a Blue-winged. I also took a couple of photos. But when I got home and saw this one I couldn't begin to figure out what it was. Can you? This watercolor is not very detailed. But I deliberately made it somewhat confused because that's exactly what it was in the photo. In fact I've probably accentuated some clues that weren't quite so evident in the photo. It's a Black and White Warbler. In the photo the dark above eye looked like it covered the entire head and made it even more confusing. And the butt, which more or less takes up the entire picture, had a buff wash I'd never noticed before.

In any case I just wanted to do a quick version of it because it was so surprising. Try as I might I couldn't get any sketches of the other warblers, including a Canada.

Because migration of the passerines has started here I've had an excuse to be out the last couple of days, birding and trying to sketch. But those two pastels from last post are still there waiting to be finished. I did ditch the paisley bell bottoms.

Watching Warblers

I think it was probably about 15 years ago at a 'Warbler Weekend' at
Pocono Environmental Education Center that we first saw the video 'Watching Warblers' by Michael Male and Judy Fieth. At that time PEEC's workshops started on Friday night and ended on Sunday afternoon. It was always thrilling to watch the main Friday night presentation, a teaser for what was ahead. These presentations were almost always successful and made you eager to get out early the next morning and see the birds. But one time this video was also played. That was enough to nearly give you a heart attack - just too much excitement! All of the colorful eastern wood warblers on one video, mainly in breeding habitat, and often singing their songs. What more could you ask for? Well outside of seeing the birds themselves I mean.

May is the month of warbler migration in Philadelphia. A few have arrived but nowhere near as many as you'd expect by now. But barring some sort of horrific fallout from the Gulf oil spill, which is always possible, they should be here soon in greater numbers. Just today I saw a couple of Canada, Black and White and Common Yellowthroat warblers. And Ovenbirds were singing away though I didn't see them.

It's generally difficult to even see warblers let alone draw them. This year will be worse than usual because the trees are already fully leafed out. We may easily hear warblers but seeing them will be hard. And yet this is the only chance I'll have to draw them in their breeding plumage. If you can barely see them how in the world can you draw them?

Another birder asked me this very question last week in Cape May as we searched Higbee Beach for warblers. Well I've never been successful at it. But I hope to change that this year. I did at least get the head of a Prairie Warbler last week at Cape May. One problem, outside of being distracted by their beautiful colors and patterns, is that I just don't really grasp their basic shape. I can never figure out how the head fits with the torso, and where the wings fit on the torso.

So this afternoon I played 'Watching Warblers' and sketched as it played. Though I could have stopped the DVD and had an easier time drawing I didn't do so. When I'm out in the field the birds aren't going to stop and pose for me. They're busy hunting for food. So the best way to get ready for drawing them was to just draw as the tape played. You see the results.

I like them, even though they're meant to be an exercise, not finished drawings. I think that they've accomplished that somewhat. We'll see what happens now when the warblers finally arrive.

Even if you have no interest in drawing birds I'd really recommend this DVD. If you have any interest in wood warblers I think you'll enjoy it. And if you have no interest in wood warblers, well you are missing one of the wonders of the natural world. Enjoy them while you can.