A Century of My Watercolors, or Perhaps Just Eleven Years

American Wigeon. Watercolor  by Ken Januski.

Well!!! It's been a long time since I've posted anything here. But not quite as long as the time between the two watercolors of Pine Warblers below, that being almost eleven years. As I said in 2017 I eventually found that there wasn't much of  an audience  for  the blog, if you ignored hackers or  other undesirables, and I also found that writing time took away from painting time.

Still art is a balance I think between work and thought and one should not be totally ignored for the other. So there are a couple of thoughts for this post.

One I was reminded of by Robert Greenberg in his Great Courses course on Concert Masterworks. I think  he was talking about Beethoven. He said that composing music is much more than just writing a  melody; it's also about rhetoric and logic, basically organizing a piece of music.  In terms of art it means that a representation of something is not enough, no matter how many details an artist might include. It's got  to hold together logically and also captivate an audience. That captivation is through expectation and surprise. We should all understand that from our own experience so I won't go into it.

Another thought: watercolor is  not my forte. But I keep going back to it. For one thing I've found  that it can be a way to quickly explore an idea or subject. But another is  that it is one of my favorite mediums, but only when done by a master like Winslow Homer or John Singer Sargent. It can be such a bright, fresh, light-filled medium and it seems perfect for portraying birds and the outside. I did a maximum of three watercolors in all my years as an undegraduate and graduate(at 2 colleges) student in studio art. It was only when I decided to use birds as subjects in late 2006 that I turned to  it. And boy did I have a lot to learn. I guess that's why I'm showing  the brand new watercolor from today below as well as one of the same subject from eleven years  ago  in 2007. They show, along with the other watercolors here, my progress over the years.

A final thought: sometimes it can take a long while to figure out the right medium for a subject, for instance woodblock, watercolor, charcoal drawing, oil painting, etc. I spend much of my time looking at photos I've taken or sketches I've done from life, waiting for one of them to spark an idea, some possible way to create a piece of art that I'll be happy with. In other words I'm looking for inspiration. But inspiration is not easily found. Recently I decided that when a subject seemed interesting but where I still couldn't figure out the medium to use,  or the composition or some such thing, that it was best to just do something  at  that time, rather than let if  fade into my memory because inspiration wasn't there yet. Most of the watercolors here, outside of the old Pine Warbler watercolor, were done with that motivation.

Both the American Wigeon and the Prothonotary Warbler were based on photos that I'd taken and that struck me. But I still couldn't figure out either the medium or  the composition. So I decided to just do fairly large watercolors and see what happened. At 12x16 inches they were too small, at least for me, to just be studies. But there also wasn't the pressure to do a finished work of  art. I'm happy with them and with the method. It seems like a better way to get to more developed work than to just file away an idea for another time.

Pine Warbler. Watercolor by Ken Januski.

Often in the past I've done quick pencil and watercolor  sketches  of birds that I've just seen. I often want to commemorate the sighting in some way. So  the first step is a sketch. That was the motivation for the Pine Warbler above. A very early one appeared very briefly outside my studio window two days  ago. But I also wanted to get away from small sketches. Such small sketches are nice in that they are too small to  create worry about failure. On the other hand they are also too small to motivate much ambition. So I'm  trying to work larger and on better paper when I want to commemorate experiences. Some will be failures. But I  also might get a more finished work of art. Right now I'm using watercolor  for this but the other day I  was a bit tempted to go back to  acrylic again. We'll see. In the meantime I'm relatively happy with this. And it is an improvement, though not  as much as  I'd like, over the watercolor from 11 years ago below.

Pine Warbler. Early Watercolor by Ken Januski

I've already talked a bit about the watercolor of a Prothonotary Warbler below. Since it is a rare bird for Philadelphia, and especially for anywhere  other than John Heinz NWR, I was really happy to see it. This is the second watercolor I've done of  it. The other is in sumi brush pen and watercolor  and is based on the same photo. So there is some similarity to  this. But neither of them fully portray the experience as I'd like to, even though I'm quite fond  of the watercolor below. That I think gets back to what Greenberg said about being more than a melody. Good art or music uses its language to create something much larger. So that will remain an ambition for my experience of a Prothonotary along the Wissahickon. It may very well be that only an abstraction, in one medium or another, will do the trick!!

Prothonotary Warbler. Watercolor by Ken Januski.

Black-throated Green Warbler Lino/Woodcut/Reduction Lino

Black-throated Green Warbler. Linocut/Woodcut/Reduction Linocut by Ken Januski.

It always amazes me how long it takes from start to finish on a small color linocut. In this case it's been almost two weeks, and as with most art the end is the hardest. It's when a small mistake can seem to ruin all the previous work. At the same time the work starts to pull together and you can see the end in sight. That can make it exciting in a good way.

This is the final version of the combination linocut, reduction linocut and woodblock, three different blocks treated somewhat differently. It's a bit subdued for me and it will take awhile for me to decide if I like that.

The final edition is 20, printed by hand with Gamblin oil-based inks on Rives Heavyweight paper. The entire print is 7x9 inches and the image alone is 4x6. It is for sale at my Etsy store listed on the right side of this blog.

One thing I'm happy with is the use of line in the print. I wanted to use the final black block to pull the print together, as well as represent much of the warbler. But I didn't want it to look like an outline, almost like a cartoon. Some people use this well but I knew that I wouldn't. So this is a compromise and an experiment. It's the first time I've used a master block. I'm not sure I'll use it again but I think I will. It does offer some new possibilities.

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.

Sketching Cuckoos, Vireos, Flycatchers

It's a bit difficult to explain the appeal of field sketching to someone who either doesn't sketch from life, doesn't know birds, or both. When I started seriously with field sketching birds about three years ago it was incredibly frustrating. Not only do most of them not sit still but often they're obscured by leaves, branches, etc. It's often easy to ID a bird with partial visual information. But it's much harder when you actually want to sketch it accurately.
I've gone over this theme before so I won't pursue it more here. Suffice it to say that even with the mistakes you see here it's now gotten to the point where it is thrilling to be able fo sketch bird lives.
The bird at bottom left of two pages of field sketches above is supposed to be a Red-eyed Vireo. In the top drawing I was disappointed as I almost always am with my Red-eyed Vireo sketches. I look at them as long as they're visible, try to remember everything I've seen and then put it down on paper. Splat! Another failure. Often I'll check guidebooks afterwards to see what I've gotten wrong. In this case I got a great but brief look at another Red-eyed a day or two later. One thing I noticed, particularly when seen from below, was how short the tail is. That is added information that is added to the second drawing. And I think it makes it seem a little more believable.
I've been lucky enough to see Black-billed Cuckoos each of the last two springs in Philadelphia. But this years, which is shown at the top right of the top drawing is much more successful. After my disappointment with last year's sketch I paid more attention this time. The sketch above it by the way is a cuckoo in flight. I saw this before I actually saw the Black-billed Cuckoo. I had no idea what it was but couldn't ignore the extremely long pointed tail. When I actually found the cuckoo, perched horizontally on a branch as they often are, I knew what the long-tailed bird had been.
All of these sketches are based on my visual memory a few seconds after staring at the bird. The one exception is the Yellow-throated Vireo at the bottom right of the bottom drawing. We saw him as we got into our car after birding at the Wissahickon this morning. In fact I'd already put away my binoculars and had to get them back out. Often these birds seem hidden high in the leaves, singing vigorously but completely invisible. But this one was at eye-level at one point. My sketchbook was also now in the back of the car. But about a half an hour when I got home I did the sketch, based on what I remembered.
Other birds portrayed include numerous Acadian Flycatchers, and Eastern Phoebe, Common Yellowthroat and singing Veery all seen at the Wissahickon over the last two days. The top drawing includes a Black-throated Blue Warbler, Solitary Sandpiper, with badly drawn legs, and a Northern Rough-winged Swallow most seen last weekend as part of the Pennsylvania Migration Count.
Though there can be a certain evocation of the actual even when looking at photos taken of birds seen I always find it very thin. I end up responding to the photo not to my memory of the experience. For evoking the experience itself there's nothing better than a field sketch. I think many artists who draw from life, regardless of subject, will understand this.
As a long time abstract artist I always realized what I was missing by no longer working from life. I gained other things that made up for it, especially an almost total formal freedom. But I'm quite happy to be back drawing from life. There is still plenty of room for abstract freedom.

Finishing the Sandhill Cranes

Well this has not been an easy or comfortable finish, but I think the Sandhill Cranes are done. This has been a constant struggle in balancing the muted gray background with a brighter, more color-saturated middle and foreground. Getting the middle and foreground too color saturated early on is what led to my use of sponging. Since then I've tried to add a little more color without making it too brash compared to the background. Also I wanted to keep it somewhat true to what I saw: early morning mist subduing most colors but a certain amount of brightness in the foreground. I think I've succeeded.

It's been an artistic adventure. Sponging is new to me and generally I don't like it in watercolor. But it seemed worth trying here and I'm happy I tried. An artist needs all the tools he can get and now I have a new one!

In the accompanying photos the top photo is the finished one. The other one shows it just before a few final touches.

Sponging Watercolor

I went back into yesterday's watercolor of the Sandhill Cranes. I always expected to do this since yesterday was just a start. Still I knew that I had a freshness yesterday that might disappear with more work.

Well I hadn't gotten far today before I realized that I used too many full strength colors and that the painting had become far darker than I'd intended, especially since when I'd seen the cranes much was enveloped in a blue-grey early morning fog.

So out came my new natural sponge. I often don't like watercolor with a lot of sponging but sometimes it just seems necessary and seems to work. However there is a fine line between subtle luminosity and mud!

This still needs more work. When I next look at it will probably be clear whether luminosity or mud has won.

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.

'Wildlife Art' and Me

I began drawing and painting birds in late 2006. The inspiration, outside of years of birdwatching, was the book 'Drawing Birds' by John Busby. I loved the plein air versions of birds that I found in it. They crackled with life. My own artistic background, outside of 3-5 years drawing insects in pen and ink viewed under a microscope, was 20-25 years of mainly abstract or non-objective work.

But I'd become very disillusioned with the art world and had stopped doing abstract art. After reading 'Drawing Birds' I was so excited about what I saw that I decided to try my hand at naturalistic art, using birds as subjects. The small watercolor at top, of shorebirds at Nummy Island near Cape May, NJ was my first bird watercolor. It was done in late 2006.

But I soon ran into a problem. As I started looking at 'wildilfe art', includng 'bird art', I found that most of it just left me cold. I don't want to elaborate on that here. If I had to generalize I'd say that it felt overly-precise and lacking in life.

My purpose in this post is not to criticize though. It's actually to mention two sites that I've found recently that remind me of the possibility of exciting 'bird art.' Both sites are listed on the right side of this page. The first is Nick Derry's blog. Though Nick also has a web site with more finished work this blog shows his sketches from life. I think that they are really exciting. The second site is a publisher, The Langford Press. The site is a bit clunky and has some broken links. But it also lists a number of wildlife-related books, part of the Wildlife Art Series, that look very interesting. I notice that some of the artists who publish there are also artists whose work I admired in 'Drawing Birds.'

I also reviewed 'Lars Jonsonn's Birds' at Amazon earlier this year and it is a stunning example of someone who does work that is both naturalistic and artful. So this is turning out to be a good year for me and 'wildlife art.' I keep finding more and more that I really like.

There is of course a great tradition of European and American artists who have been great artists while still using naturalistic subject matter. Durer, Courbet and Homer spring instantly to mind. But that seems less true since the 1900s. This is a huge subject that I really don't want to tackle in any depth. It may be due to the decline in popularity of representational art in the 'high art' world during most of the 20th century. But for whatever reason it seems to me that the most accomplished art and naturalistic art have been two different genres for 100 years or more. I don't see any reason that this should be the case. And I'm very happy whenever I find naturalistic art which also seems to be in the tradition of the best and most accomplished art. That's been the case this year.

Laughing Gulls in Watercolor

I'm sure I've mentioned before that my background in art is primarily abstract. It's also large! For many years my smallest paintings were 4'x6'. Most were 6'x8'. But it's been awhile since I've worked at that large size.

As I've investigated art based on birds, or earlier insects, it made more sense to start small. I was unfamiliar with both birds and insects. If I'd started working large I would have ended up with gross, untruthful, and dull generalizations. Working small has forced me to look more closely at both(the insects very closely since they were drawn under a microscope).

BUT, every once in while it can drive me nuts. I think the recent detailed watercolor pencil work pushed me to the brink. I needed the freedom of something less constricting. So today I went back to straight watercolor.



The sketch at top is a quick sketch, with a few color notes, that I did just for practice. The second version is on watercolor paper rather than sketch paper. The birds are Laughing Gulls, seen in April, 2009 just as they made their arrival in Cape May, NJ. Though they'll eventually be on every lamp post in the area, at this time they were in one of the ponds at 'The Meadows,' a great area owned by The Nature Conservancy.

I'm not big on scenic photos or paintings. But sunrise or sunset here always changes my mind. The light and color are just too beautiful.



In this case the sunset which is in back of me as I took the photo is reflected in the background of the painting, with some of it spilling out onto the gulls and water. It was a stunning sight and made the black and white of the Laughing Gulls particularly striking.

I'm stopping for today, before I do something I regret. Tomorrow I'll probably do at least some more work on it.

I should add that this still isn't a large painting. It's only 7"x10" like many of my recent paintings. It's more the free brushwork that has made it seem 'larger' to me. But it is time to start increasing the size of my watercolors. I do not yet approach them as canvases on which to orchestrate color, value, texture and light as I always did with abstract art. I'm very much missing that type of painting.

Watercolor Pencil Experiments Continued

There were a couple of things that bothered me about yesteday's watercolor pencil experiment with this Greater Yellowlegs. First the bird had too much of a reddish cast; second, the water looked too splotchy and colorless; third, the foreground was pretty undefined and lacking in color.

Normally I'd just go back into them while the painting was still wet and make a grand mess of things. This time I was more patient and waited for the paper to be completely dry before going back into it with the watercolor pencils. I have managed to get the colors of the yellowlegs a little closer to true. But I'm not really happy with either the water or the foreground. I can't say that layering on new colors has worked very well. But it may be more difficult with such a large undifferentiated space as still water. So I'm going to continue to experiment with layering of washes. I do think that eventually I'll find the way to use watercolor pencils to their best advantage. Patience, patience, patience!!

Young 'Limberlost' Veery

Thrushes are one of our 'old favorite' birds. In appearance they are attractive though probably not as splendid as some birds, especially warblers. They are comfortable and familiar, and always pleasant to see. In song it's nearly impossible to beat them but that is another story.

We often see a lot of Veerys in Shenandoah National Park. And it seems, though I could be wrong, that we see fewer and fewer Wood Thrushes there each year. By contrast here in Philadelphia we're fortunate to have a nearby woods that is always full of Wood Thrushes in breeding season.

The Veery above was a young bird, seen in Shenandoah National Park in May, 2009. Some of my very first watercolors when I took up watercolor about three years ago were also of Veerys seen and photographed in Shenandoah. I'm happy to say that I have made progress, at least in the Veerys themselves. The background has improved a bit, but it's still pretty impressionistic. What struck us about this bird when we saw it was the very minimal breast-streaking. Though Veerys always look somewhat innocent he seemed more that way than most. I'm pretty sure that was due to the lack of streaking and paler, younger face.



The photo above was the first version. After I took a photo of it and looked at it more closely I realized it was completely missing the warm rusty wash that colored the young Veery. He looked far too cold. I also didn't like the stark light/dark contrast on the log on which he stood. As I've said many, many times here I always tend to use up the valuable white of watercolor paper much too quickly. Then I'm stuck with a dark, less than vibrant, less than fresh watercolor. In this case I probably saved too much. So in the final version at top I toned down the contrast quite a bit and used up more of the white of the paper.



This last photo is just a preliminary sketch that I did from the photo before beginning the actual watercolor. It's mainly just a warmup exercise and an attempt to place the subject on the paper. You can see a darker area in the wings, where I needed to do some reworking to get them properly positioned. I also used it to test out some of the colors that I planned to use on the actual painting.

So what is it that makes this Veery a 'Limberlost' Veery? That's easy. We saw him on the Limberlost trail at Shenandoah. This used to be one of our favorite trails, full of very old, and very large Hemlocks. But Wooly Adelgids have killed off all of those old trees. They were saved more than one hundred years ago from the lumber mills by a owner with some environmental foresight. But that couldn't save them from invasive pests. Though all the literature suggests that hemlock loving birds like Blackburnian Warblers and Acadian Flycatchers are common there we haven't seen any in years. Blue-headed Vireos are still plentiful but it seems like birds of pioneer forests are more likely. The Chestnut-Sided Warbler is plentiful. In any case we saw this handsome young Veery on this trail. That gave me the opportunity to say a little bit about the history of Limberlost and its wonderful hemlocks.

Acadian Flycatcher Continued

Because we've been on vacation a lot recently we've missed seeing much of the spring migration locally. With that in mind we headed to Carpenter's Woods in Philadelphia this morning.

But it was extremely quiet. About the only surprise, outside of the missing migrating warblers, was one Baltimore Oriole that landed about 6 feet from us very low to the ground. But we also seemed to sit ourselves down on a bench that must have been very near to an Acadian Flycatcher nest. We had one or more Acadian Flycatchers flying around very close to us. That gave me a chance to take another look and notice how much browner the wings of this bird are compared to his back, which is much more olive.

When we returned home I went back to work on the watercolor above and added some olive wash. You can also see that I fiddled quite a bit with the background. In a sketch like this you have the choice to either render the background in detail or to improvise the 'impression' of a background. Since the bird is the foremost concern I, and many other bird artists, often use 'impressionistic' backgrounds. Sometimes they work; sometimes they do not. When they do not it's too late to change course and go back to a detailed background. I'm not completely happy with the background here. But I do think that any more 'fiddling' will just lead to a dead painting.

So unless this watercolor develops an itch that must be scratched it is done.

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!

Late Blog Anniversary

It's been over 13 months since I started this blog and I wanted to write a short anniversary note.

I wasn't really sure what I was going to do here. I hoped to use it to show new sketches, perhaps more developed drawings and paintings, and write about my birding and other nature-oriented activities.

In some ways it's been wildly successful: I think it's really been an impetus for me to do more artwork. I can't argue with that. The more time I spend on art the better.

Writing about birding and nature has not been as successful. But that's really because I've learned that though I am interested in them there are very many other bloggers writing similar blogs and my observations aren't really anything special. So I started off writing more about birds and nature but slowly I changed to writing more about art, especially art that has birds or nature as it's subject.

That seems to me to have been a pretty organic evolution. I'm sure readers might sometimes wonder just what kind of hodgepodge blog I have: sometimes it's about birding, sometimes about art, sometimes something else. Well every blog has a right to be just what it wants and hope that it finds an audience. I think along those lines. But I also think that it's grown into a blog with a fairly predictable subject: art about nature, especially my own art.

Another huge aspect of blogging though is the people I've met visiting their blogs, and sometimes welcoming them as visitors here. I was a skeptic about blogs for many years. Who would be interested in someone's personal writings, especially a few, million 'someones'? Well I found that I became quite attached to certain blogs and get a great deal of pleasure from reading them. I also feel that I've become part of a community. I'm not going to name any particular blogs here but blogs where I comment frequently will know that they are among them. As I said this has been one of the most pleasant surprises of the blogosphere.

Finally there's something I've kept out of this blog: art theory. As readers of other blogs know I can sometimes expound at length about art theory. This is a dangerous tendency and I've often felt that I ought to expound here if I'm going to go on at such length. But I don't. I may mention it once in awhile but I don't go at length about contemporary art history and theory as I have on other blogs. I think it would be too disjointed if I were to do so here. And I think it takes away from my main goal: to create art. So art theory is something that I'll continue to avoid here and probably on other blogs as well. Art theory is fine but I think for most artists they should really convince themselves that they don't have time for it. It can be enervating rather than inspirational. Enough said on that!

So Happy Anniversary to this blog and to all its readers!

Flying Hiccup Revisited

Almost a year ago a Ruby-Crowned Kinglet appeared in our backyard. He was a very welcome visitor and I wanted to sketch him. But as with all Ruby-Crowned or Golden-Crowned Kinglets I've seen he just wouldn't sit still long enough for me to do so.



I wrote a post on this in late February of 2008. When I've seen kinglets close up, i.e. so close I don't need my binoculars, they always looked like ping-pong balls with wings. Perfectly round. But also constantly in motion. So I decided that I really shouldn't call them ping-pong balls. That perfect sphericality implies solidity and stasis. That certainly doesn't describe kinglets. Then 'Flying Hiccup' popped into my head. That sounded right. Kinglets are constantly exploding with movement, just like an uncontrollable hiccup.

The two photos above show a Ruby-Crowned Kinglet from this winter. I'm not sure if it's the same one that was here last year but it is possible. My guess is that it's even probable, but that's just an uneducated guess. What is striking about the photos is how they show that ping-pong ball sphericality.

I've been trying to sketch this kinglet from life over the last few weeks. I've not been successful. But one of the first things that has struck me is the sleek profile of his upper torso. The head moves gradually and sleekly into the mantle and back, much like a Red-Eyed Vireo. This was a great surprise. I expected Roly-Poly. I found Sleek!



The sketch above shows three attempts to capture that sleekness (along with two juncos, who also didn't sit still for long). I think I may have noticed this sleekness due to my current reading: 'Lars Jonsson's Birds.' This book is incredible! Some people have said that Jonsson is the best living bird artist and he has to be one of the best. He does a spectacular job of melding detailed observation with artistic rendering and sensibility. I may write more about him at another time and have published a review of this book at Amazon.

Jonsson emphasizes close observation from life, both in his writing and in his art. And he says he just draws what he sees. If the bird leaves before he finishes what he was drawing he doesn't rely on past knowledge to finish off the sketch. He just stops drawing, making sure that anything he puts down in a sketch is just what he actually saw. Eric Ennion's advice is similar but stronger: "STOP", he says when the bird has moved or flown. Don't use your visual memory of it, at least not when you're making sketches. Only use sketches for real, observed portrayal.

In trying that method today I of course didn't get far before the kinglet flew. In fact I wrote this post a week ago and have held off on publishing it in the hopes of including a better sketch. No such luck though the kinglet has been here for a few minutes most days. The one thing I kept seeing was the sleek line from head to back. That is what I have tried to emphasize in the sketch above. It's also what I look for each time I see him. One day I'll finally do a decent sketch.

I first wrote about sketching kinglets even before my post of a year ago. I think that it's been at least 18 months now that I've talked about trying to sketch them. Like mastering watercolor it has been a difficult task. But it is a worthy one and one I'm confident I'll succeed at eventually. In the meantime the work of Lars Jonsson has been a great example of the possibility of accomplishing such goals.