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.

See, ID, Draw, Paint

Or should it be: See, Draw, Paint, ID? These questions came to me on arrival home from a 2700 mile driving trip to the Midwest, particularly Horicon Marsh in Wisconsin and Magee Marsh in Ohio.

I think my brain wasn't fully functioning due to all the driving and much more caffeine than is usual for me. My mind was just sort of wandering after getting home Sunday night and I kept going back to one moment of the trip.

The occasion was a shorebird that I and my wife saw in the mudflats at Magee Marsh just as we were about to leave. It was very difficult to see amidst the mud and the water lilies. When we did see it, it was puzzling. Some of the markings, like the way the white of the breast curves up into the flanks and the monocolor underwings indicated Solitary Sandpiper. But the yellow-orange legs and size of bill indicated Lesser Yellowlegs. We're just starting to get familiar with shorebirds so we were constantly referring back to Sibley for help. That, along with a single call note, confused us even more. Some aspects of the bird supported each ID.

But that was just the start of the problems. There wasn't time to draw, since we needed to be getting on the road in order to reach our next hotel in Pennsylvania before dark. So we both decided to take some quick photos for later reference. Sounds easy right? Until we realized, I more than my wife, that we couldn't find the shorebird once we tried to shoot a photo! Where was he in all that variety of gray, green, brown and blue?



After about 15 minutes of trying to find the bird, then focus him in the camera, and shoot the photo I came to a great realization: there were two birds! They were almost identical in shape, both had eye rings, both had yellowish legs, and they were very similar in size. They even fed in a similar fashion!



The surprise answer to the ID question was: BOTH! One was a Lesser Yellowlegs and the other was a Solitary Sandpiper. I'd seen both, thinking they were the same bird, and came up with contradictory field markings!

All of this was prelude to what I thought about that first night back home though. My thought was that I'd placed seeing and identifying the bird above all else. I could have just tried to see it, sketch it, perhaps use that as the basis for a painting, and then at some later time, maybe when titling the painting, discover what the bird(s) actually was. Someone with my artistic background might easily first see the artistic possibilities for a drawing and painting and only much later worry about an id.

I didn't and that I found interesting. To me it seemed a metaphor for what I've been trying to do in my bird art: remain true to what I see, but also make sure that the end result is artistic, not 'just' a scientific sketch. I put 'just' in quotes because I don't mean to criticize scientific sketches. They are both valuable and beautiful. It's just that I really value art, probably more than science. And yet in this case I put science first. Perhaps this is just due to the fact that we were birding first and sketching second. Still I found it interesting.

I think much bird art swings between these two extremes. For some artists correct representation of a particular bird and species is paramount. For others the bird is just an excuse for 'making art.' I don't mean to come down on one side or the other and probably am smack dab in the middle. This little episode reminded me of that. And I do find it a comfortable and enjoyable place to be!

By the way the watercolor at top is one that I whipped out this morning as an illustration for this post.

If You Like Art, Especially The Best Art,

and if you like talking, writing or reading about it, you might very much enjoy this site devoted to The Best Artists. I saw a link to it on another site I enjoy, this one devoted generally to drawing and painting birds and nature, Drawing the Motmot.

As anyone who has read this blog knows I do spend a lot of time thinking about art, probably more so than I do about birds and nature. But I think that there is a dearth of discourse on art today. I guess this is somewhat hard to believe given that with the internet and blogs it's unlikely that there is a dearth of discourse on anything! Nonetheless The Best Artists site is refreshing in that it offers the thoughts of one person on one artist or piece of art that they find striking. It's been a pleasure to read, and respond to occasionally. I'd really encourage anyone who has a love of art to take a look.

I especially like the fact that it seems free of art historical baggage that obfuscates so much art. This is a straightforward response of one person to the art he sees. Though I've studied Art History, and often enjoyed it, it can have a way of getting in the way of the art, interpreting it for you before you get a chance to interpret it for yourself. In my experience you never truly appreciate art if you don't interpret it for yourself. Art History might augment this but more often it prevents an honest response from the individual. I think this is especially true of the tapes packaged for art exhibits. Their intent may be good but they really disguise the art. It's far better to see an exhibit without any of this, experiencing it for yourself, seeing your own reactions, and then afterwards maybe going back and reading about it or using audio-visual aids. The Best Artists site allows you to read one persons direct observations of art. As I said I find it quite refreshing and enjoyable.

Acadian Flycatcher in Pastel - No Details

I enjoyed switching from watercolor to pastel in my last drawing and decided to try it again today. Much more than watercolor it is an additive process, i.e. I can start out without a clear plan of what I'm going to do, knowing that I can improvise as I go along. I don't need to worry as much about using up something, e.g. the white of the paper, and then needing to get it back later. Though it's possible to use the clear white of the paper thoughtlessly, just as in watercolor, it is easier to get it back to some degree through the use of white pastel. Since pastel is itself opaque, the addition of another layer of opaque white is not as noticeable as it is in watercolor. Or better, it doesn't seem as bothersome.

This drawing is based on photos of an Acadian Flycatcher taken in Shenandoah National Park in May, 2008. The bird is even more distant than were the Wood Ducks in my last drawing and posting. Because of that I knew that any work based on it was going to have to devote a lot of space to the surrounding forest, with very little devoted to the flycatcher itself.

I didn't do much in the way of a preliminary drawing. If I had done so it would have focused on the tree limbs and foliage and not on the flycatcher, since he is so small. At the same time I had to do something with him so that he was the focus of the painting. This might have been somewhat easier in watercolor and pen/pencil since I could use the line of the pen or pencil to add some small detail. But detail with the broad edge of a pastel is not so easy. Basically pastel doesn't allow detail.

So my idea here was to start laying in color, knowing that there would probably be numerous changes as I tried to unify the drawing coloristically, remain true to some extent to the sense of the deep forest that is often the home of the Acadian Flycatcher, and make sure that he still stood out from the surrounding jungle of limbs and leaves.

The drawing so far has some sense of the deep forest, but the Flycatcher is a bit lost. And the upper part of the drawing reads like it might be sky when in fact it is just a deeper part of the forest. I may need to change the colors to remedy that. Still I think I've kept some of the sense of the way in which he sat and tilted his head. The colors may also have gotten a bit too monotonous, though that in fact is what they actually were. It's time to leave it be for now and come back another day.

A Bird in the Hand.............Is Drawn Differently

Following up on my last post on precision in art I realized afterwards that one reason I've been able to do more precise work with insects is that I've caught the insects and then drawn them under a dissecting microscope. The detail I can see is strong AND the insect doesn't move. It is dead.

I don't know any bird artists personally. The ones I've read about sometimes work from study skins in museums, or dead birds that they may have happened upon. In that case the bird is also dead and allows more detailed study, though of course it is no longer alive. Still it does allow a more detached scientific study similar to that of an insect under a microscope. My understanding is that this was Audubon's primary method of work, after he'd shot the bird. It is probably the best way to see some details that can only be seen in brief glimpses in the field.

On the other hand some bird artists whose work I very much admire work primarily from life, i.e. they only draw and paint what they actually see. They don't use photos. This reminds me of the times I used to draw mayflies. Mayflies live only for a day or so. Moreover everytime I used to catch them they would shrivel up into pale husks of their former beautiful selves. Their beauty was evident only when they were alive. You either had to draw them as they flitted about while alive or draw a shrunken corpse that seemed to have little relation to the live mayfly. Without getting too philosophical about this I do think that it is an apt analogy.

More detail can be seen/drawn/painted when a bird or insect is no longer alive and not being such a nuisance moving about at unexpected times. On the other hand the artist always knows the insect or bird might move and he needs to be extra alert to capture what he sees as he sees it. A second later the bird may have moved. I think that this relates to why I prefer works done from life.

The drawing at top is a portion of a larger drawing. It shows a Robber Fly drawn while viewed under a microscope. The watercolor is based on a photo taken of a Warbling Vireo at the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge(Tinicum) in Philadelphia on Memorial Day weekend, 2008. As I mentioned last time I'm always more interested in creating a work of art when using birds as subjects than I am when drawing insects. That may be related to the fact that I can never see them with the same detail that I see insects. On the other hand it may also be that the lack of precision tells me that the drawing/painting lacks something. Maybe I can rescue it with 'art'.

Palm Warblers and Precision in Art

I got back my many bird photos from May trips to Illinois and Shenandoah National Park last week. Included in them were many photos of some very friendly Palm Warblers at Oakdale Nature Preserve in Freeport, IL. Part of their cooperativeness I'm sure is related to the fact that they spend much of their time close to the ground, rather than at the top of very tall oaks like many warblers.

The image above is a small colored pen and ink drawing with watercolor wash. It's based on one of the photos. Though this Palm Warbler was close enough that the photo shows a lot of detail, particularly of feathers, I opted not to include that much detail. The same is also true of the background foliage but I usually don't have much interest in foliage detail.

The warbler itself was another story. There was a temptation to include more detail, assuming that I could also do so successfully. But, at least for me, that would require a finickiness that I thought would kill the overall life of the painting. This is probably due to both my artistic history and actual physical habit. I probably couldn't control the watercolor brush well enough to show all the details in the feathers even if I wanted to. But my artistic background, which says that no one part of the painting is ever as important as the whole painting, probably had a much larger affect.

My insect drawings are far more detailed. But in a way they are more studies, whose secondary intent was art. In my bird art, it is art itself that always takes precedence, with the secondary intent being accurate detail. Perhaps as I continue to do bird art that will change. But I doubt it. More likely art will remain the primary intent, but on a more ambitious scale than many of the small sketches that I've shown here.