Moku Hanga in Progress, and in London for SWLA

Spotted, Solitary and Least Sandpipers. Working  proof  of  moku  hanga print by Ken Januski.

I'm not sure if I've ever shown a work in progress from my Moku Hanga prints. But I easily could. That's because they take forever. I'm now on week three of this print. And I still don't have the final design, or colors. But  I'm getting close.

I had been planning to write my next post on my field sketches, both those done at Cape May in May and also those done around  here. But having three of my works in The Society of  Wildlife Artist's  annual show 'The Natural Eye': Purple Finch and Hairy Woodpecker at Andorra' has been a bit of a distraction, though certainly a pleasant one.

The three framed works waiting to be shipped off to 'The Natural Eye', accompanied  by  the  hope  that at least one of them would get in!

I'll go on a bit more about  the SWLA show later but for now I'll try to finish a thought and stick with this print. Though not a field  sketch it is based on and inspired by them.I think it was in May that I did some field sketches of both Spotted and Solitary Sandpipers at Morris Arboretum. They ended up being somewhat clumsy works but they still captured the life of the birds. And as I've said probably a million times over the course of this blog it's next to impossible for me to get that feeling of life when I'm working from photos. So it's much easier for me to be inspired by my sketches though I often will use my photos to at least see the details, and  then decide how important it is  to try to get them into the work. In this instance I also added two Least Sandpipers which I'd also seen and sketched  at Morris Arboretum in  previous years.

Once I get started on a work, particularly a print, though it used to be just as true in my large abstract paintings, my main concern becomes the orchestration of shapes, colors, textures,  and movement. Often I get seduced by the colors, shapes, etc. and find I've gotten too far away from the original impetus. So  I find it's always a dialogue/dance/or whatever you want  to call it between the original impetus and the logic and poetry of  the medium itself. I think that is why they always take so long for me to complete.

When it comes to most wildlife art, and again to repeat something I've said a million times, I  often find that it seems to get all of its emotional resonance from the reaction to  a PHOTO of something not to the real thing. That is why I love 'The Natural Eye'. Once again viewing the online gallery this year I find it positively thrilling. The art about nature  should  be as exciting as nature, or  even moreso in that it combines  the excitement of  both art AND  nature. It was particularly thrilling to be able to walk through  it in person last year both to admire and enjoy all the art work that was in it but also to honestly assess whether my own work really belonged there  or  perhaps  had gotten there by some fluke, twist of fate or whatever. Almost all artists and some time doubt themselves. I'm happy to say that I  left feeling that my work did  hold its own!

But that is not what is most important. What's most important  is  that this show demonstrates that it's quite possible to make the most ambitious, exciting, moving art possible all using wildlife as its subject. The Society of Wildlife Artists should be proud of themselves for coming up  with such a rewarding exhibit year after year.

Some More Firsts of 2017 and a Reminder About the Artistic Status of Wildlife Art

White-throated Sparrow Eating Staghorn Sumac. Watercolor by Ken Januski.

It's been a slow artistic start to 2017, probably due more to the number of bird censuses we do at this time than to any other factors. In any case I have been somewhat busy over the last week or so and am including that work here.

Above is a 9x12 inch watercolor of one of a number of White-throated Sparrows Eating Staghorn Sumac, seen along the Manayunk Canal in Philadelphia. It's on a new paper for me, Saunders Waterford.

Nashville Warbler on Bean Trellis. Moku Hanga Proof by Ken Januski.

I also decided to take a stab at traditional Japanese woodblock printmaking, called Moku Hanga. Since it can take a while to learn I've debated whether it was worth the time involved in learning it. Finally I decided to bite the bullet and buy the minimum materials required to give it a try. Readers may be most familiar with it as ukiyo-e prints from the 19th century. It is a watercolor based printmaking and thus uses far safer and more environmentally friendly materials, though it also has purely aesthetic appeal. In any case this is a first proof of the black block. When I receive some newly ordered supplies I'll be experimenting with additional color blocks.

If done correctly Moku Hanga allows for very precise registration which should allow colors and black to blend seamlessly. We shall see. That's never been a high priority for me but it's worth experimenting with.

Nesting Bald Eagles at Heinz NWR. Brush Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

I was horribly lax with field sketches last year despite my stated goal of doing more of them. So at least this year I can say I'd done a number by mid-January. These are all from Heinz NWR based on birds seen last weekend. They include two nesting Bald Eagles above, a well-hidden Northern Saw Whet Owl below and a Black-headed Gull at bottom. The latter are life birds for us. There's nothing quite as exciting as sketching a life bird from life. Photos don't even enter the competition.

Northern Saw Whet Owl at Heinz NWR. Brush Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

Black-headed Gull at Heinz NWR. Brush Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

Lastly I was reminded recently of the artistic world I've abandoned: that of mainstream galleries, museums, etc. This occurred due to my being contacted by an old artist friend of mine. As I looked at her recent work and exhibitions I was reminded that though I once exhibited like that, though not as much as I would have liked to, I can no longer do so.  Most galleries and museums will not take seriously art that uses wildlife as subject.

But I've known this for the entire time I've focused on wildlife art, about 10 years now, so I'm not complaining. I knew exactly what would happen when I chose to use nature, especially birds, as subject. On the other hand I rarely try to show in wildlife galleries or exhibitions because to a large extent I don't like the art. In fact it more often illustration than art. I've also known this for a long time so it's not a complaint.

Though not intentionally or willfully I guess I've always been an iconoclast, even though I'm one with great sympathy for past accomplishments in the arts. Vital art always revives clichés and makes them live again, regardless of what art establishments of whatever sort think art should be. So I'm quite happy working as I am, with few venues in which to show or sell, but still able to do exactly what I want. You can't beat that!

A New Woodcut and Surprising Influences

American Goldfinch on Thistle. Early State of Multi-block Woodcut by Ken Januski.

Whenever I resume printmaking there's a sense of excitement and possibility, as though I'm finally getting back to what I really should be doing. Since I've been involved with art for 40 years though and with printmaking less than 10 this is a bit surprising. Still it seems to be true. I do find much to like in printmaking, if you ignore of course all the technical problems that it is always throwing up.

A few months ago I did a watercolor sketch of an American Goldfinch vigorously tearing apart a thistle. I first did some field sketches and used those and some photos I took as the basis of the watercolor.

As so often happens these watercolor sketches eventually become prints. Who knows why this procedure seems to be comfortable and work well for me?

What struck me about the American Goldfinch when I saw it was the very vigorous pose. I couldn't help but notice the force that was shown in the legs as they gripped the flower tenaciously.

Perhaps because of all the years I spent doing figure drawing from life, and perhaps for a million other reasons, I've always liked work that shows the gesture of things. I've always been this way no matter how deep I might have been in abstract art.

And that's one thing I found that I really liked about wildlife artist Bob Kuhn when I first started looking at his work about two years ago. I've never been very fond of wildlife art, especially the big game type that Kuhn often did. What I discovered though was that what I didn't like was the clichéd big game art, not the portrayal of big game itself. Good wildlife art, as Kuhn's was, really appreciates the subject portrayed and tries to do it justice.

What was even more surprising in reading about Kuhn though and in looking at his work in reproduction is how aware he was of contemporary art. Most surprising was his use of contemporary art influences, most obviously painter Mark Rothko, in his work. He combined, quite successfully, abstraction and vigorous, realistic action.

That's the surprising influence I refer to in my title. His example always reminds me that it is possible to combine realism and abstraction in art. And he remains a surprising influence on my own work. Off the top of my head I can only think of one other such person: Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, the 18th century French still life painter. I don't think his work has ever knowingly influenced my work but I don't think I'll ever be able to un-digest as it were the quirt simplicity and beauty of his paintings. I'm sure that this is true for most artists. At least I hope so.

The woodcut above includes, at the moment, both sides of a piece of Shina plywood. On one side I'm carving the black areas, and on the others the colored areas, most likely, yellow, pink, perhaps a green and perhaps a blue. My current plans are to print the color as abstract shapes, as in some other recent prints, and print the black last on top of that. But I never know. Once a print is started it, and not me, dictates what happens next.

I wrote recently of being contemporary in your art. I think more than anything else it's the sense of improvisation that seems most contemporary in my work. This is not really good or bad, nor even planned or unplanned. It's just the way I prefer to work.  I can't say why.

More Migrating Warblers and my Favorite Watercolorists

Northern Parula. Watercolor Sketch by Ken Januski

I might as well say right off that the watercolor sketch above is pretty horrible. I recently saw this first year/fall female Northern Parula at Houston Meadows in Philadelphia. It was a beautiful little bird flitting around too quickly for me even to identify it with any certainty let alone do a sketch.

I did take a number of photos and two turned out. So I thought I'd use the best as the source of this watercolor sketch in the pages of a small Stillman and Birn Zeta sketchbook.  As usual it shows the dangers of basing anything on photos. When you do so you often copy what's in the photo rather than follow an idea in your mind, one that firmly understands the structure of the bird, and has thought about the placement of the other objects in the painting.

Often with sketches I'll just start with the photo and improvise as I go. Since it's just a sketch, unlike the watercolor of the Least Sandpipers. I have a lot of leeway. But really I don't. Even though this is sketchier it still shows a lack of conviction and sureness that just adds up to a dull little watercolor, in spite of its striking subject.

So I'm not at all pleased with it. Later I'll get to the work of watercolorists I am very pleased with. Since I feel free to criticize so much work in watercolor it's only fair to show what I consider good examples of watercolor.

But first I just wanted to mention the slow but steady flood of warblers that are migrating through. Recently I've seen Blackburnian, Tennessee, Black-throated Green, Chestnut-sided Warblers, along with American Redstarts, the Northern Parula above and of course the locally breeding Common Yellowthroats. Today I was also treated to two Great Horned Owls, and yesterday an early morning Common Nighthawk doing blazingly fast acrobatics across the sky. It is a good time to be able to be out and about. I'd love to capture that nighthawk but it seems almost too impossible to even try.

While taking a break from birding and artwork today I was skimming through Treasures of the Forgotten Forest, published by the Artists for Nature foundation about the Tumbesian region of Peru and Ecuador. As I leafed through it I realized how many examples of the artists who took part in it were in watercolor. Almost all have a freedom, freshness, creativity and boldness that accentuate the boldness of watercolor itself rather than deny it its soul, more or less, by painting within tight little contour lines, never a brushmark out of place.

The more I've done wildlife art, and looked at wildlife art shows, particularly bird art shows the sadder I get. So much of it just so lifeless. There is no other way to say it: it is lifeless. Quite an irony given the vitality of the subject matter. But looking at this book you see the opposite: examples of artists whose work complements nature's vitality. I can't really show the illustrations from the book so I'll just name some of the artists in it. I'm familiar with almost all of them and have seen their work elsewhere, but this book seems almost by accident I think to show a lot of watercolor.

So if you get a chance look online for examples of, or perhaps buy a book by, the following artists: Barry Van Dusen, Lars Jonsson, Kim Atkinson, Darren Woodhead, Vadim Gorbatov, Bruce Pearson, Juan Varela Simo, Michael Warren, Wolfgang Weber. There are also other artists in the book but I've named just the ones whose watercolor work is so striking. If you perhaps are able to see the book itself I think you'll also see how varied their work is.

Before I accidentally picked up that book I had planned to choose some of my favorite watercolor paintings by Winslow Homer, perhaps America's best watercolorist. But before I did I looked through my book of John Singer Sargent's watercolors. Maybe HE's America's best watercolorist. Who knows? Both show how exciting watercolor can be and how it can be just as ambitious and powerful as oil painting. So here's a small list of some of my favorite watercolors by each:

Winslow Homer:
1.The Blue Boat
2.Saguenay River, Lower Rapids
3.In the Jungle, Florida
4.Shooting the Rapids
5.Under the Falls, the Grand Discharge
6.The Adirondack Guide
7.A Garden in Nassau
8."For to be a Farmer's Boy", the last not because it's my favorite but because of the loose way that he handled the pumpkin vines and field. It's a great example of how to paint with watercolor rather than use watercolor washes to fill in a drawing.

John Singer Sargent:
1.A Tent in the Rockies
2.Lake Louise, Canadian Rockies, an incredibly bold painting, esp. for  its time.
3.Derelicts, boats not people
4.The Bathers
5.Muddy Alligators
6.Gourds
7.La Biancheria
8.Carrarra: Quarry II
9.Mountain Stream
10.Bus Horses in Jerusalem.

These are just a few. As I've flipped through my Homer and Sargent watercolor books as I've written this I keep coming across new ones that I'd like to add. But this should give you a taste. I've included Homer's In the Jungle and Sargent's Muddy Alligators because both have wildlife, non-bird wildlife as subject. And yet you can bet you will never, ever see work of this quality in a wildlife art show. Sad but true.

All in all I think what's struck me about their work is that they truly do use watercolor to paint, not to color in lines. That is probably the main reason that I think so highly of them and so little of watercolors that just color in the lines, a method by the way with which Homer began his career.

When I say how disappointed I am with my own watercolors, especially the sketches, it's because I want to some day do work like the artists I've mentioned here.

Completed Mergansers and Grebes Woodcut

Mergansers and Grebes on the Schuylkill River. Multi-block Reduction Woodcut by Ken Januski.

Done! Though inevitably as I print what should be the last state of a print I start thinking, 'Well I could do that or I could add this.' But Sometimes you just have to stop and save any new thoughts for a new print.

This is an edition of 15. The entire print is 9x11 inches and the image itself is 6x8 inches. I used Daniel Smith water soluble relief inks on Shin Torinoko paper from McClains. I had read that this paper, reasonably priced, was also good for use with multiple blocks. Since I knew I'd be using both reduction woodcut and multiple wood blocks it seemed like a good choice. And I have to say that it's held up well.

I'm quite happy I pursued this, especially the 5-6 abstract shapes that constituted the first image that I printed, way back when. They force this print out of the category of something you might actually see, I think, into the category of evoking something you might experience.

As returning readers well know I have a thing about photography. I doubt that it's far removed from the notion, apocryphal or not, that photographs steal your soul. To me they are always so much less that what I've seen and experienced.

I guess that's why I've always loved art. But wildlife art seems to be joined at the hip to photography. Numerous artists have complained about this but photographic wildlife art still seems to completely overwhelm any other type of wildlife art.

So since the day I started bird art, almost eight years ago now, I've wanted to create a type of art that is both naturalistic, in the sense that there is some sort of truth to the birds and other fauna and flora portrayed but that is also artistic, that is not limited by verisimilitude. A well known wildlife artist once questioned online my notion that artists can know too much. But surely they can, just like muscle bound athletes are limited. Knowledge is in the service of art and not the other way round.

In any case I found a few years ago that relief printmaking seemed to offer a way to combine naturalism and art. But I also found that I was still getting a little closer to photographic representation than I liked, even if it was fairly expressionistic.

So this print is really the first to really break out of that. The geometric shapes put a stumbling block in the way of representation, deliberately. In my mind they have served well in forcing me to keep this print about art, as well as about representation. All in all I'm quite happy with the results and hope that this will be a fruitful path to pursue. I'm pretty confident that it will.

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.

Painting with Crayons

Wood Ducks, Mallard and Canada Geese at Valley Green. Crayon and wash by Ken Januski

Wood Ducks, Mallard and Canada Geese. Pencil sketch by Ken Januski

Once warblers arrive it's easy to convince myself that I ought to go out and look for them even if there are a million other things I should be doing. That happened yesterday. And of course, outside of three singing Louisiana Waterthrushes, they were nowhere to be seen. The highlight of the day was an Osprey sailing up and down the Wissahickon, calling in his full throated voice as he went. I say 'sailing' deliberately. The wind was so strong that he went by as though shot out of an arrow, twisting and turning with the curves of the stream itself.

I brougth both my Moleskine and Stillman and Birn sketchbooks. As I said last post I'm in the habit of using the Moleskine for ballpoint pen field sketches. When I took up wildlife art I pretty much thought that's what defined a 'field sketch.' And to a large extent that's true.

But I also found myself really admiring the more compositional sketches of a few wildlife artists, often done in the field as well. The problem with field sketches that just try to understand and portray the bird by itself is that they present a problem when used as the basis for a painting. How do you compose it? What goes in the background, the foreground? What are the colors, the light?

That's something that more compositional studies can accomplish. I decided that this might be a very good use of the Stillman and Birn sketchbooks. So yesterday I brought along a small 5.5x8.5. Zeta sketchbook. It was hardbound so I knew that could open it and use  it as one 8.5x11 sheet.

Since I'd seen few birds along the way, and since there were up to 30 handsome Wood Ducks, all at Valley Green I decided to sit down on one of the benches and at least work up a pencil sketch. None of these birds ever appeared as they do in the sketch above. I started with the foreground Canada Goose, then moved on to two different Wood Ducks and placed them behind him, then added a distant goose to his left, Finally I added the female Mallard that floated by later.

This type of compositional study is something that I greatly enjoy. In some ways it exemplifies the very center of art, especially natural art: creating something new out of things actually seen. It emphasizes creativity.

I'm not saying that this is a great 'creation.' I did the pencil sketch on site and then added crayon and wash in my studio over the last two days. I thought I was finished last night but when I looked at the photo I'd taken I saw that all the values seemed to be the same. In particular I thought it would be better to make the foreground darker than the background. This is the type of compositional decision that I think involves another type of artistic creativity.

The quintessential medium for this type of creativity is I think oil or acrylic, mainly because they allow endless variation, modification, fine-tuning. And that's the nature of the title of this post. I really do think that using these Caran d'Ache Neocolor II crayons allows as much flexibility and modification is as possible on a paper surface, outside of actually painting on paper. I think that's one thing I find so exciting about using them on the sturdy Stillman and Birn paper. I can get much closer to painting, and all the artistic fine-tuning that that implies, without actually using paint on canvas.

So that's why I call this post 'Painting with Crayons.' This process gets very close to painting. And for me it gives me the chance to try out small paintings. In that sense this is a true sketchbook inthe original use of the term - a tool in which ideas can be tried out.

I've often liked artists drawings more than their paintings. Rembrandt is a prime instance of this. They show the individuality, creativity, rawness of an artist without a lot of cleaning up to make presentable for the buying public. I think that's still pretty much true today. I often prefer the sketches of wildlife artists to their paintings. An exception I can think of right off is Bob Kuhn, mainly because his paintings don't have a high finish. They keep some of the raw power of sketches, and they make artistic composition as important as nature itself.

It's the ease with which I can make artistic compostional and color decisions with the crayons and the Zeta sketchbook that make me so happy with them as working method for art. Finally I should add that I'd never make a finished painting based completely on the sketch above. There's too much that I'm unhapy with. But it is enough for me to picture a painting in my minds eye, and think about how I might change it to make an actual painting. That's incredibly valuable. After I'd posted this I realized that another version might be good for this Saturday's demo, listed at upper right of this page. I won't have time to do a drawing and use crayons to color it so I've been planning to have the sketch done in advance. This is a variation on the crayon sketch, but this time done with the benefit of reference photos. It's done on Stillman and Birn Delta paper, at a largish 9x12 size. Something I've mentioned before but is worth repeating is that this paper erases beautifully.

100th Birthday of Abstract Art

Sadly I received the last or next to last print edition of Newsweek this week. I received it as a gift in its newest slimmed down version but I've very much enjoyed it, especially for the essays from various political perspectives. I hate, positively hate, reading anything online. It reminds me of eating cotton candy and seems incapable of substance. Still that is the way the world is going and there's nothing I can do about it other than pay for the print subscriptions I enjoy.

The reason I mention this is that the latest issue had an essay by Blake Gopnik on a show celebrating the birth of abstract and non-objective art. As the article begins he mentions a now lost newsreel of 1912 that shows Art That Has No Subject!

Not since the Italians invented fully realist painting, 500 years earlier, had visual art made such a huge leap. Up until that landmark fall of 1912, fine artists had always assumed their work would link up to the world, one way or another.

Today many art lovers have forgotten how revolutionary this was. And yet to much of the population, including many lovers of naturalistic and wildlife art, it's as though it never happened.

When I was a graduate student at Berkeley and Cornell I studied a lot of history along with studio art, which was my true field of study. I liked this as it seemed to confirm my suspicions about how art had developed over the years. In particular it was interesting to see throughout the 19th century a move away from detail, toward allowing more expressiveness in color, brushwork, composition. To me it seemed an inevitable separation of subject and method to the point where eventually method was stronger than subject and then eventually the subject was gone entirely.

I'm not about to say that this was good! It just seemed inevitable. I recently read a biography of John Constable, Even this beloved naturalistic painter seemed to move toward greater expressiveness in his brushwork.  Even Cezanne, whose letters showed that he wasn't trying to be an abstractionist but instead really portray exactly what he saw, made paintings where you couldn't help but notice the individual brushmarks,  the rich sense of color, and of course the composition. I could rattle through a list of 19th century artists and show how the great majority moved in this direction. Suffice it to say: Corot, Manet, Monet, Gauguin, Degas.

Studying the history of 19th century art is almost like reading a mystery novel. There is constant suspense, at least in the good ones. That suspense is based on just one question: when will subject matter be completely  dispensed with? The answer seems to be 1912.

At top is a pastel drawing and collage of mine that I did at least 20 years ago. It is called April. I show it mainly because I  don't want to run into copyright problems showing the work illustrated in Gopnik's article. I'd be better off showing a Kandinsky, Malevich or Mondrian. But this is also appropriate because it wouldn't exist without the abstract/non-objective tradition.

My  work today is always a mixture of abstraction and naturalism. Even if it doesn't show in the work in my mind there is always a dialog if not a brawling argument between abstract and representational.

The wildlife art world that I inhabit now has almost no truck with abstraction, except I think with sculptors for some unknown reason. I constantly  feel an alien in that world because of my abstract background, almost my abstract DNA.

Gopnik quotes the curator of the show as saying that the true nature of abstraction was not abstraction though. It was the idea of the heart ot art as being 'unsettling.' This is a common thought. But one I  don't buy at all, and the reason I'm writing this post.

It is true in the sense that most art today, at least that which comes out of the art schools, gets  shown in the better galleries and museums, and has ignorant speculators masquerading as collectors lined up to buy it, does in fact see 'unsettling' as the recurrent theme.

But it's not. Do you  know what is unsettling today? Wildlife Art! Ask yourself when you have last seen wildlife art, or just plain art that features animals or the outdoors at a quality museum or gallery. I'd bet that you can't. No one can. Why? Because for all the supposed diversity, plurality, openness of contemporary art there is one thing that cannot be tolerated: wildlife art.

I'd offer a different theory of abstract art and the current state of art. As I said abstraction truly seemed inevitable throughout the 19th century. Artist after artist was pulled in its direction. But inevitably painting about nothing, just like writing about nothing or composing music about nothing becomes a dead end. It  produced great art. Of that I don't have the slightest doubt.

But all great ideas eventually lose their influence and get replaced or revised by something else. That something else today I think is the world of realism, especially the natural world. I know that this is heresy in the art world. And it's probably just as much a heresy in the wildlife art world where there's so little appreciation of abstract art. But art has always been very big. It ignores small minds and goes its own way. In 50 years my guess is that people will see that art struggled for meaning in the late 20th century and early 21st century and eventually  found it in a return  to subject matter, especially that of tne natural world.

One other thing that was not part of abstraction, in fact I think had absolutely nothing to do with it was irony,  the ennervated motivation of artists like Duchamp. It would be easy to say that irony is the true common thread of much art of the last 100 years and certainly of the last 50. But irony  truly is a dead end,  the cheap trick used by  clever people to avoid engagement in the world. I don't believe anything of worth, in art or elsewhere, comes from the unengaged. And that's another reason I think why an art establishment totally  wed to the ironic stance just can't stomach the true and honest enthusiasm many wildlife artists have for both their subject and the artistic media that they  use to  portray their subject. It is just too honest and heartfelt fo be acceptable!

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.

Still Sketching

Garden chores, carpentry chores related to our garden, and a lot of birding and field sketching have argued against any developed work during the last week or two. I don't mind this. During winter I long for warmer weather so that I can actually sketch from life. So that's what I like to do at this time of year. And of course there are always the new arrivals to sketch. That adds some excitement. Above is a field sketch of the first Wood Thrush of 2012. Below it is a poor sketch of an Eastern Screech Owl. In these two instances and almost all the others on pages below I didn't have my scope. So the sketches are done by looking at bird in binoculars and then sketching the bird. It's almost three years since I started field sketching seriously. It is a daunting task. The birds are so often gone before you can put pen or pencil to paper. It seems impossible. And yet when I see field sketches by talented artists I can feel the excitement that they must have had as they drew. Sketches from photos, including my own, leave me cold by comparison. There's just nothing like a good field sketch. I imagine this is related to why I've always preferred Rembrandt's sketches to his paintings. There's an electricity in them that is not found elsewhere.

But it has not been an easy road. The excitement is always there but the results don't always seem to indicate much improvement. This is less so with field sketches done with a spotting scope and birds that tend to sit for more than a split second. And I'm very happy with those. With the sketches done in the manner of this page though I sometimes feel disappointed in my progress. That is starting to change though. I've learned that such sketching requires both mental effort and experience. Once you've gotten certain parts of a bird wrong enough times you start drawing it differently even in field sketches. More I think you learn what you don't know. As I've learned all the things I don't know about constructing a bird on paper I've started to pay more and more attention to those aspects when looking at a bird to sketch it. So even a field sketch that is done in less than 10 seconds may include years of experience and knowledge. I'm starting to feel that with the way I draw woodpeckers, thrushes, wrens, even those troublesome warblers. On the page above are some recent attempts at a Yellow-rumped Warbler, Pileated Woodpecker and Gray Catbird. They still leave much to be desired. But finally I feel that it won't be long before my field sketches show a full and convincing sketch of the birds I see. It is an exciting time.

Above some sketches of a Carolina Wren, all of whom seem to be perched in the open and singing at this time of year, a Red-bellied Woodpecker and a Hairy Woodpecker. I'm starting to feel at home with Carolina Wrens. Woodpeckers are more complicated but I'm starting to pay attention to the different shapes and sizes of their bills, the shapes of their heads, and the patterns on their face and wings. It's a lot to keep track of and generally I can only notice a few things before the bird has flown. But the knowledge is accumulating. I expect that soon my various woodpeckers will actually look like the species they are meant to portray. There is something tremendously exciting about being able to sketch birds as they appear, and disappear, right in front of you. By the way almost all of the credit for my improvement, outside of my actual practice, can be laid at the great examples of field sketching found at the Wildlife Art thread at birdforum.net.

Almost an Anniversary

I'm not big on landmark dates and it's only by accident that I realized that it's just about the second anniversary of this blog. It will be almost for awhile because I started in on February 29, 2008. There will be no 02.29 this year. Or next.

So I guess that it's today or nothing. When I began this I thought that it would be more writing than art, and would probably be more about birds and nature than about art. But I knew that I wanted art in the title because it would inevitably make an appearance.

I was happy to discover that there are a wealth of people writing well about both birds and nature on the web. Many of them have more experience, more passion, more interest than I do. I have all of them just not so much as many others. And I also realized I didn't like much of the bird and wildlife art I saw on the web. Maybe I could do some wildlife art that I liked. Since I've spent far more of my life with art than with nature the blog has headed off in that direction.

Birds and nature are still the subject of the art but art itself has gained prominence. I'm happy with that. It's where my talents lie.

I'm including one photo here. It's a synopsis of the last two posts, various studies and the finished drawing that came about from seeing the Cooper's Hawk on Friday. It shows to an extent how I work: try one medium, then maybe another, maybe back to the first, until eventually I feel like I've portrayed the subject in the way that I want.

A year ago I probably would have tried one medium or two at best for a particular subject. Now I'll thry three or four. In time I might add oil paint. But I think this is the way art works best. You keep trying until you get it the way you want. Part of this is that I'm devoting more time to art. Much of this I'm sure is due to the fine example set by the artists of the Wildlife Art section of birdforum.net. Seeing such high quality work on a daily basis has been a great stimulus.

And I'm sure that part of it too is due to my readers. I never really thought much about them/you when I started this. But I have enjoyed all the readers, both the anonymous ones whose name I'll never know as well as those who comment with some regularity. An artists toughest and most important critic is always himself. But it's nice to know that there are some other people enjoying what he or she does as well.

'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.