Winterizing

I knew that it couldn't be true -- 6 to 10 inches of snow this weekend for Philadelphia. It's still October. We often don't get snow until January! And yet that's the current forecast.

But the House Sparrows at my studio window feeder looked like they might be preparing for snow. The sketch above is based on sparrows at my window. When there are a lot of them feeding frantically I can assure you that they don't sit still for long. Most of the time they're fighting. Just as I start one another sparrow lands on or near him or her and starts fighting. Often I can only get one line down, like the breast in the female at lower left, before the bird is gone. I need to try to remember the rest of the bird. Or, wait until another bird takes a similar pose.

This may seem either silly or masochistic. But it actually is fun. You're forced to really think about how the bird is put together. For instance you may need to put a head on a sparrow, as I did at lower left. Inevitably some things will be wrong. But just as true is the fact that you might capture some sense of life. And you do get more familiar with the birds you're sketching.

For this I'm using a Bic 537R ball point pen. It's extraordinary how much the ink runs when water touches it. Normally this would be a catastrophe. But here I like it. It's a very quick way to change a drawing into a painting, or at least a wash drawing. And you never know what surprises you might get.

Just as the sparrows are winterizing I've been doing the same, along with my wife, around the house and garden. Today just in time for the cold and snow I finished making some new windows for our cold frame. These are metal windows that I picked up off the street years ago thinking that they might come in handy. But they need a wooden frame to work as tops for the cold frame. I spent the last few days using a Stanley handheld multiplane to dado out grooves in some 2x2s to put the window into. They're not perfect but they look like they should keep the cold out. So my many choi seedlings will I hope be able to grow to a usable state. And my poor little basil seedlings, planted very late as you can guess, may survive long enough to give a bit of basil flavor to November and perhaps December meals.

Between this type of winterizing work, preparing frames and mats for the MRAC show, and getting end of warm weather birding in before it's too late I haven't done much in the way of art. When that happens I often feel like I need to do some sort of doodling, sort of thoughtless art, to warm myself and figure out where I want to go.

Recently I've done some of that with the runny ball point pen and a Stillman & Birn Gamma sketchbook. But that sketchbook isn't made for strong washes. So I finally broke down and bought a Delta sketchbook with a much heavier paper. I really wanted to try it out. So that's what you see above: the same Bic pen, watercolor and the Delta paper. This shows the immature Little Blue Heron that I saw at Morris Arboretum this summer along with a Painted Turtle, happily looking in the opposite direction as the heron. I've always tempted to do something with it. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to take that composition out for a spin.

I do really like the ability to test out compositions like this. Eventually it or some of the other recent similar experiments should end up as paintings or prints.

More Shorebirds in Ink

I picked up some acrylic paints and a couple of small stretched canvases yesterday. I haven't painted in oil or acrylic in about 20 years. But there has been a hankering, especially as I've gotten more comfortable using birds and nature as my subject. As I wait for inspiration, or perhaps courage, to hit me though and get me to start that first painting I continue to experiment with ball point pen and shorebirds.

I've always liked ink. It can be intimidating since it's permanent. You can't erase a line as you can with pencil. Since my lines tend to feel their way along, searching for the right contour, rather than precisely putting down the correct line as soon as the pen hits the paper this can present a problem. I'm likely to have a lot of exploratory lines. But this rarely bothers me. I tend to make the first lines light and then darken them when I'm more certain.

Of course this doesn't always work. Sometimes I make a dark line where I'm wanting to delineate the edge of a light object. The line looks wrong. But I just live with it. I think the appeal of ink is that it's permanent. So the same thing that makes it intimidating also makes it appealing. It's an odd thing. Still I like it. I don't have to worry as much about smudging as I do with pencil. And the end result almost always looks more like a finished work of art.

The 'quickest' line I ever found was made with a bamboo pen dipped in ink. It flew across the paper, often leaving huge ink drips in its way. I don't use it anymore. But there is a lot of speed in the Bic 537R ball point pen I'm testing out. There's nothing inherently good about quickness in a drawing instrument. But for me I think the appeal is that the pen can keep up with the speed of my thoughts or intuition on what to do next in the drawing. It just moves effortlessly, like there's a direct connection from my brain to the paper.

I have loved drawings for as long as I can remember. Not that I want to compare myself but when I try to render the mud and water in the drawings above I'm reminded of how much I used to love Rembrandt's drawings and the way his landscapes in pen and ink, and sometimes wash, seemed to so effortlessly portray land, water, sun and shade. They were a miracle of draftsmanship. I think it's partially remembering that aspect of his drawings and many other great drawings that keeps me interested in doing these.

As I said I do have some new acrylics and some new linoleum blocks. But for now I'm just captivated by pen and ink. The drawings are based on photos I took at Cape May in mid-August. I also did many field sketches and I'm sure that experience enters in as well. At top is a Pectoral Sandpiper. I probably should have elongated his neck just a tad. Below him the always striking Black Skimmer. I rarely see them as close as this one. So it was a great opportunity to sketch and take photos. Also in the drawing a small Least Sandpiper, hidden by some reeds. The Black Skimmer is such an unusual looking bird, and an elegant one, that I'm sure I will return to him.