Mid-August Field Sketches

It seems like there's always something getting in the way of my field sketching. A cool morning today convinced me to get out to Morris Arboretum to see if anything unusual was around. Sure enough the first bird I saw was a Great Egret. A few field sketches of the bird are above. The head is the only sketch viewed through a scope. Most of the time I was so close to the bird that I couldn't use the spotting scope to view him, unless I just wanted to look at a certain section.

In the field sketches above I did a number of other sketches of him, these done with my naked eye. Egrets and herons are often both a pleasure and a challenge to sketch. They are very elegant. But this one was constantly feeding. Just as I started to put down the bill and head he'd move and I'd not be able to get the sinuous curves of the neck, or I'd get that and miss the torso. That can be frustrating. But if you keep at it it becomes easier. Though these are all very small sketches I'm happy with them.
Other birds seen and sketched include Cedar Waxwings, Northern Rough-winged Swallow, Belted Kingfisher just before being attacked by a second one and an immature Red-tailed Hawk. I continue to get a great thrill from field sketches, both my own and those of others.
What differentiates me from many bird artists I think is that I rarely want to take this hard won knowledge of birds and make a more finished painting based on it. I value the knowledge but more to do something spontaneous, not to do something more finished. I've never had much appreciation for high-finish art. And I don't think that will ever change. To me it seems to kill off, or at least lessen, all the sense of life that field sketches often so wondrously capture.
By the way my new web site is moving along. Hot and humid weather this week convinced me to stay in and continue work on it. I'm slowly adding a collection of thumbnail photos of a lot of work. Eventually much of my work will all be visible here.

Housekeeping and Such

Over the last four or five years I've given a couple of web hosts my dollars and loyalty. One hosted my primary web site. The other was the host of my primary online store. I don't want to single either out for criticism. But over time my disappointment in each has grown. The main web site host has double-biiled me each of the last 4-5 years, each time assuring me it won't happen again. But it does and so I've been looking for a replacement. Having to use WordPress at another site I administer has convinced me to explore Wordpress as an alternative. A screenshot from my first experimentation is above. There is really nothing there yet. But eventually the new WordPress site should have something interesting. I am using it as a Content Management System rather than as a blog, even though it is primarily used for blogging just like blogger.
The online store host has always catered to bulk item sellers who didn't seem to have the need so show viewers a good, detailed look at their products. I realized when I started that it wasn't intended for art sales but I thought maybe I could get it to work for me. I really didn't like any of the group art marketplaces that I saw and so I didn't want to sign up with any of them. There were some good aspects to my online store host but I just hated the fact that it only allowed very small photos.
My experimentation with Etsy over the last two years has convinced me that it shouldn't be difficult to offer template pages that show a detailed photo of the artwork for sale. There is also the bonus of the little bit of code that can be inserted on any page to show a selection from Etsy. Below is an example from my main etsy store -'berkeleySU - Art and Prints from Nature.'
I'm very fond of both the large size and the ability to show work from Etsy on other web sites. In fact I was so fond of it that I decided I needed to start another Etsy site for abstract work. The abstract work is old and not much related to what I cover on this blog. But I'm still very fond of my strictly abstract work and it has always been fairly popular on the site of the now defunct store. Below is an example of some of the work from it on esty.

So not much art or nature news here. Just some biz talk. And I'm afraid I need to spend some more time framing works for another show so I may delay that even further. But the weather is getting a bit cooler and the outdoors calls. One of these days.............