Cape May Travelogue

About a year ago someone on the Wildlife Art thread of Birdforum said that my collection of vacation field sketches were a great travelogue. That stuck with me. In some ways my sketches are closer to a travelogue in that I just sketch much of what I see rather than sitting down and just concentrating on a few species and really getting to know them well. So that's the nature of the title.

Above is one of the first birds we saw in upper left, a juvenile Common Moorhen, barely visible in the dusk at 'The Meadows' in Cape May. Below him a Merlin seen the next morning at Hidden Valley along with a Magnolia Warbler and juvenile White-crowned Sparrow within 100 yards of Merlin. On the opposite page a Common Yellowthroat at same location. At bottom a Pied-billed Grebe seen later that day back  at 'The Meadows.'

The following day brought an Indigo Bunting and a Purple Finch to Higbee Beach on the left page. Also a distant seabird, possibly White-winged Scoter and a hint of the Common Moorhen again. At right also from 'The Meadows' that afternoon a Stilt Sandpiper at top, Pied-billed Grebe, Ruddy Duck, and a Virginia Rail from memory. One end of the ponds at 'The Meadowns' held Soras, Virginia Rails and a juvenile Common Moorhen. We saw them almost every night of our stay but always in so much dark and in such crowded(with birders) conditions, that I was never full satisfied with my sketches.

The next day we found a number of Brown Thrashers at the viewing platform at Higbee Beach. A partial drawing of one is at top left above. Below him a beautiful juvenile Blue Grosbeak, mainly in rich browns with just a hint of blue/black. At right a smallish Pine Siskin at top, followed by a Northern Flicker and two versions of a Magnolia Warbler stretching to reach food on the leaves above him. The Pine Siskin was indicative of the many irruptive birds around Cape May: huge numbers of them Red-breasted Nuthatches and Purple Finches.

Later that day we stopped at Rea Farm where both kinglets, especially many Golden-crowned Kinglets, flitted about. At the top of the left page is one of each. Below is an immature Black-crowned Night Heron, about 50 yards away from the Kinglets. In another portion of the farm we found a nicely perched Northern Flicker, one of nearly 100 we must have seen as well as the beautiful Red Saddlebags dragonfly. It flew about a field of pumpkins, rarely landing long enough to ID let alone sketch. In the same area were numerous crisply marked Savannah Sparrows. In the back of my mind is a painting that combines saddlebags dragonfly, those sparrows and the numerous pumpkings.

The following day, with rain predicted we drove to Forsythe NWR. There some of our first birds were Dunlin at upper left. Later we saw a distant mature Bald Eagle, as well as the ubiquitous Yellow-rumped Warblers also on left. The following day we were back at Higbee Beach on a very windy day. Raptors swooped, dove, exploded up and around us. It was thrilling. At top right two versions of Sharp-shinned Hawks. We sat and had lunch and I sketched an Eastern Comma on ground in front of us while Northern Harriers carried on in front of us. At bottom is an attempt to capture one of them.

Later that day we were back at 'The Meadows' where we saw a kiting Osprey, his torso curved in an unlikely position. He's at top left followed by a perched Northern Harrier who just didn't stay long enough for me to finish him, in particular his head.
On our last day we hunted for a bird someone had told us was a Northern Wheater and showed us photos they'd taken. Since we've never seen one but knew that one had been there recently we thought the person was correct in calling it a Northern Wheatear. In particular I noticed the rich buff orange color. Later as I thought about it, and looked at guidebooks, I remembered that the photo reminded me of a phoebe. The color then got me thinking about a Say's Phoebe, especially given it's location, perched on a fence rather than down on the ground like a wheatear. As we left town we searched for it for at least an hour where it had been reported. Only when we got home did I get an email saying that it had been IDd as a Nothern Mockingbird, given the misleading buff/orange cast by the sun and the camera. Once again I was reminded of how low a consideration color should be when identifying a bird.
The non-discovery of that rare bird out of the way we headed home and stopped a various Cumberland County locations along the way. It was largely quiet. But we did see a Royal Tern along with a number of Greater Yellowlegs so tucked into themselves that the shape looked more like Dunlin. The tern with a background yellowlegs is portrayed at top right. We saw them at Heislerville WMA, our last stop before returning to the yard American Robins and House Sparrows of our own back yard.

Early Fall Field Sketches

When you see as many birds as I do, mainly because I'm lucky enough to be able to get outside often, you might ask how I choose what to sketch? One of the first questions I think I ask myself is how long I think the bird might stay in its current position? Is it even worth trying to sketch or will it likely be gone before I even open my sketchbook and get my pen ready, just as a wood warbler might? This is always a combination of gut feeling, sense of adventurousness or caution at that very moment, desire to portray an unusual bird, etc.

In the page of sketches above, which actually took a full two weeks to do there were a number of motivations. With the male Black-throated Blue Warbler and the Solitary Vireo on left page it was just the desire to get these birds down on paper. Even while I was sketching the Black-throated Blue I couldn' t remember what part of the face was black and what blue on the bird I'd seen less than 30 seconds previously. There is so much to try to take in and remember when you know the bird may  be gone in a split second. Similar questions arose for the vireo.

Woodpeckers I've found have different bills from one species to the next. One lower mandible may go out from the head in a more horizontal direction and less of an angle than that of another species. So  I'll often try  to sketch a familiar bird just so  I get a better idea of just  how the bill is situated. That's the case with the Hairy Woodpecker on left and Northern Flicker on right here It's all just a learning process, storing up knowledge, made through both success and failure, so that when I do something more developed I'll have the confidence that I'm being true to the bird.

I can't stand overly detailed work, like that which attempts to get every single feather in  the right place. But I also don't want to have the general sense of the bird wrong. For me, unlike for the buyers of much wildlife art, accuracy is not paramount. But it is a bonus. Artistic qualities always come first.

This has always been an odd part of 'wildlife art.' Is is art or science? For me it is always art, but I'd prefer to also know the science  involved.

I never seem to get Belted Kingfishers right. I'm always a bit disappointed. And  sometimes I'm completely thrown by the bill. Is it thick or thin, short or long? It seems to change by individual bird and my viewpoint. In this case the bill seemed particularly long and thick. So that's how I've portrayed it, even though I have many other sketches, and photos, where it s eemed thinner and shorter. I suppose that's one of the exciting parts of field sketching: things are never quite as simple and pat as you might expect.

Last bird here is a House Sparrrow at lower right and a Broad-winged Hawk at lower left. Such a hawk doesn't have a tail that is dark just on the  sides. It has bands of light and dark. And yet that's what I saw so I put it down. I've done this with other birds where what I saw made no sense and didn't match my knowledge of the bird. Since it's an unsual situation though to me it makes sense to just put down what I saw. After the fact I can double check with guidebooks to see if I can make sense of what caused me to see what I thought I did. At times like this I guess I'm showing more of my scientific side than my artistic.

People often think that science and art are opposed. But my guess is that many knowledgeable artists and scientists know that the opposite is the case.

Preliminary Show

With two big shows in November it's somewhat surprisng to be in another one in October. This is a smaller one, the Member's Show at the Manayunk Roxborough Art Center, a few blocks from our house. In it members of the art center in general can show not just the members of the Artists Coop. For me it's a good opportunity to show work that I might not put in November shows, e.g. 'Killdeer with Worm' above, a 12x16 watercolor, or works I've just finished and am eager to see hanging, e.g. 'High Tide at Nummy Island', a 9x12 acrylic below.

There is some possiblity that not all works will be hung because you just never know how much work will be submitted. If there's too much then not all work will go up. On the theory that there will be enough room though I'm also submitting the work below, a watercolor titled 'Great Black-backed Gull at Flat Rock Dam.' This work seems to be among my most unpopular recent works, at least judged by certain criteria. It was rejected from the 4th Annual Juried Show at MRAC this summer. It tops the list of least visited works at my Etsy store. Almost no one has bothered to look at it. And yet I like it quite a bit and it was well received when I showed it online when I first did it. In the end popular response is not important. I like it so I'm submitting it. I just realized I also showed it at the recent Manayunk Arts Festival and it got little response. Perhaps it's too dark, with a barely visible bird, and even a dark mat. Who knows? As I said it's something I like and it captures the scene of a huge gull dwarfed but seemingly unfazed by the giant dam behind him.

Line, Mass and Lies

Looking through some old framed artwork recently I realized I'd been telling some lies in writing about my move from abstract to representational art over the last 10-15 years. I was looking for a frame I could use for some upcoming shows. I needed something larger than what I've been using.

That's when I found this large (23x29 inches) drawing I'd done about 30 years ago. It was  one of about 10 I did of musicians I liked, both classical and jazz. Above is one of Thelonious Monk. At that time I was doing abstract drawings that were just about as spare as this one. I'd decided, rightly or wrongly, that you could make a strong work of art using almost entirely lines.

It was a similar method I used for my  first artworks featuring birds about six years ago. The only difference is that I also used mass and erasures so that it was more than just a linear drawing. Still it was a shock to me to realize that birds and insects were not my first attempts at represenational work.

Inside baseball you might say and you're probably right. But it did remind me of how often art, at least for me, is a balance/conflict between line and mass. Almost all of my field sketches focus on lines. There is something so appealing about line, about getting just the right line to capture a shape. Lines of course don't really exist in nature. But they sure do in art.

The other side of line however, as seen at top, is mass. Instead of defining edges of things the artists tries to capture  their mass, often using light to help.  As an artist line is often a real security  belt. Paint gets messy and it's easy to come unmoored, especially when painting with brushes that really are  too large to make lines.

Perhaps this explains why I  change media so often. I feel a bit unmoored and want the security that line brings, in either sketches or linos. But then I miss mass, color, light and I'm back to painting. More inside baseball I think, but something many artists will understand.

The painting at top, based on a simliar drawing of a week or so ago, is not yet done. Hopefully I will get it done in time for the Members Show at the Mayanunk  Roxborough Art Center on Sunday.  If not it should be in my three person show, 'Wild at Art',  also at MRAC in November.

The Magic of Light

Just recently I needed to complete a resume of my artistic career and also create an Artist's Statement for an upcoming show. One of the notable parts of it was the fact that I've done abstract art since grade school. As I thought about it I realized that I've always preferred abstract art, from grade school through graduate degrees in college and beyond.

When I tried to think of contemporary representational artists who had influenced meduring my artistic training two stood out: Elmer Bischoff, with whom I studied at University of California, Berkeley, and Richard Diebenkorn, a fellow Bay Area Figurative Painter of Elmer Bischoff's, though by now a far more famous  one.

Even the White House currently  hangs an abstract Diebenkorn. This Diebenkorn is from his earlier Berkeley series and not the later, and really magnificent, Ocean Park series. When I was in California and studying with Bischoff it was his contemporary abstract paintings and those of Diebenkorn that really struck me. I'm sure I did many bad imitations!

Nonetheless I also was thoroughly taken with their ink and wash  figurative drawings. Both seemed to portray light as solidly as if it were a Yosemite rockface. I was competely entralled with this and also did many  poor imitations in my figure drawing classes.

I didn't turn to representational art until about 10-12 years ago, first with insects, then six or seven years ago with birds. Occasionally my love of light will surface in that work. That is partially what happened in the ballpoint pen drawing at top. It's based on a photo, which in itself seems to do something with light in terms of capturing it and making it solid. I do feel it's cheating in a way to use it as a source. But I've always loved the photos I've taken of shorebirds on Nummy Island last spring..The birds are Black-bellied Plovers, Short-billed Dowitchers and Dunlins.

The combination of light, variety of shapes  and bills, not to mention color makes this scene one that I keep  wanting to portray. Here I  did it with the intention of just getting  down the shapes of the different birds. Inevitably I also tried to capture the sense of light.

Art can be many things. Though as I've said I've spent so much of my artistic career as an  abstract artist I can't help but stand in wonder at the way  some artists capture light in naturalistic paintings. I think that Diebenkorn captured light in  his abstract paintings but it seems to me to be a rare accomplishment. For that representational artists as varied as Hopper, Vermeer and Constable are always  the best examples. And a very strong reason  to work representationally. I'd have to say that for me there's  not anything much more moving than light captured in art.

More Flycatchers

A little over a month ago I saw an Olive-sided Flycatcher at Morris Arboretum. Though I'm well aware of what they look like I took a photo of it because of the color of the underside of its tail, not because I recognized it as an Olive-sided. I didn't I think because it wasn't in the right context. I just don't expect to find them here, even though I've been reading about them migrating through Pennsylvania for the last month.

Yesterday Jerene and I decided to take  advantage of the beautiful weather and visit Morris in the afternoon. Almost as soon as we arrived a large flycatcher landed near us in a large dead tree, a popular spot for many birds at Morris. Sure enough it was another Olive-sided. Above is a quick watercolor done this morning from one of the photos I  took as well as two field sketches done from life. In the second you  can see I've portrayed the white tuft that occasionally is visible behind the tertials on this bird. It's also visible in one of  the photos below.

Because this seems to be an unusual bird in Philadelphia I've included the two photos above for ebird reviewers or anyone else who wants more 'proof' than my own say so. In a way I hate to encourage the reliance on photos since they're so often unreliable. But when they're clearcut I guess that they do no harm. Still I do try to avoid them. There are a few trillion blogs with photos. I think some people hunger for something different.

In the page of field sketches above are a female Black-throated Blue warbler, a Chestnut-sided Warbler, an Eastern Phoebe, tiny Northern Parula seem from beneath and another flycatcher that sketching helped me to ID as an Eastern Pewee. I'm still struck by how much sketching is a from of learning, not so much about the skill of drawing as it is about seeing better. It's long been a British tradition with birders. It's too bad it's not so here.

Showing with SWLA Again

About a month ago I hurriedly finished off the framing, glass cleaning and packing of three prints to send them off to the Society of Wildlife Art's 49th Annual Exhbition at The Mall Galleries in London, UK. Above is a photo of the three prints I sent. I still hadn't switched  plexiglass for glass in the one on lower right so that's why it looks somewhat matte.

 Last year I had the great adventure of sending two prints off to the competition and having them sit in customs for weeks. I completely gave up on them being in the show because they were still in customs on the day of final judiging. Then I got an email a week or two afterwards that they  had arrived at the gallery and would be in the show after all. What a thrilling email that was!

I couldn't afford to have them sit in customs for weeks this year because they  needed to be at the gallery for final judging in about two weeks. And they  had to be delivered on one of two specific dates. That meant that I had to find a courier to recieve the shipment then bring them to the gallery on one of the two specific dates. I couldn't just have them delivered by a specific date. I really debated whether I should just forget about it. Again I was thrilled to be pre-selected, but pre-selection seemed to make it less certain of final acceptance than last year when it was only offered to overseas applicatnts. It was only thanks to a courier, PicturePost, in Britain that I decided to gamble on the expense, possible delay in customs and then possible rejection after all of that.

I mentioned this to a doctor a few days afterwards and she said: why bother? Well it's a good question. It's answered in part by this review at Making a Mark . Among the other things it mentions are 'a masterly approach to the printmaking', 'an exhibition which puts a very strong emphasis on the quality of the art and the creative process', and 'the standard of the art in the exhibition is exceptionally good.'

More than that though is the work of the members of The Society of Wildife Artists . I just really like so much of the art of its members. I really  can't think of a group of artists I'd rather exhibit with. As I've mentioned many times I've always been somewhat reluctant to call myself a 'wildlife artist.' Why? Because I found that I didn't like so much of the wildlife art that I saw, especially that which looked like it was based on photographs. The longer I've been at it though the more artists I've come to admire. And many of the ones I most admire belong to the SWLA. It is still hard to believe that last year I exhibited with artists that I  greatly  admire, including some whose books I own. Since I didn't get to London to see the show though,  it still seems a bit unreal to me. The line is on my resume but not the experience.

It's very unlikely I'll get to London to see the show this year, especially as I'm in a three-person show here at the Manayunk Roxborough Art  Center at the same time. But again I can't say how thrilling it was to find out at the end of last week that I'll again be showing at this exhibition. Of course once I found out I was in all the tribulations about cost, customs, possible rejection, etc. quickly faded away.. You just can't beat showing with the artists you most admire.

Those Dragonflies

In my last post I mentioned taking some photos of dragonlfies. Recently I've been looking through my photos and just couldn't resist trying some sketches.I last did insect sketches 10-15 years ago. What a difference time makes! In those I had to draw the insects under a dissecting microscope. That was the only  way to see enough detail. I also had to kill them in a killing jar in order to study them.

Today I can take digital photos while they're still alive and active. The magnification is equal to that of the dissecting scope I used to use. Of  coures I can't move them around to see hidden parts and understand the structure better. Without my memory of structure from those old drawings these photos might be not quite as useful.

In any case I've greatly  enjoyed doing these. They are all on Moleskine A4 Sketchbook paper and all done with  a Caran d'Ache ballpoint pen. One thing I immediately remembered as I did them was why  I love drawing insects: they are a marvel of structure and shape and they allow an artist to bring to  bear many skills.

Drawing the nude is mainly an exercise in curvilinear shapes. Drawing from nature often involves amorphous, undifferentiated shapes, at least when it comes to most foliage and many landscapes. Hard edges are there but not all that often and if so broken up by  softness, for instance in tree trunks and the foliage that hides them. But with insects you  can have the sweeping elegant curve of a wing  coupled with  the hard edges of the limbs or thorax.

As I've drawn these I found that I couldn't resist trying to capture the shapes of the thorax and head, even when they were hidden by wing and bad photography. One of the appeals of naturalistic drawing, at least for me, is rendering the complexity of three dimensions into two dimensions. I love doing this and sometimes wonder if it's not almost a primitive desire, a evolutionary remnant of early days in the life of man. There is something so satisfying about getting down the structure of something. In any case, before I waft way in the ether, this is one of the things I enjoy about drawing insects.

And of course dragonflies are beautiful as well as having a fascinating life history if you care to study it. Many people will of course love dragonflies for their color, pattern, movement. I do too. But for now it's time to get their structure down. Perhaps in the future I'll be able to sketch them live and add color, trying to  get many of their striking qualities captured all at once.

The sketch at top includes, at least as best I can tell, a Blue Dasher and Eastern Pondhawk. The sketch at bottom has the ubiquitous, at least at Morris Arboretum, Twelve-spotted Skimmer and an unidentified damselfly.

Chasing Flycatchers

I didn't really expect to find an unusual flycatcher when I found the Olive-sided Flycatcher at Morris Arboretum a fe weeks ago. I was more on the lookout for warblers and shorebirds. In fact it was only when I got home and looked at the photos I'd taken that I realized that the bird was not the Kingbird that often is up there.
But yesterday was another story. Many people throughout Pennsylvania had been seeing migrating flycatchers, in particular Yellow-bellied. I don't there's anything particularly interesting about them other than their relative rarity here. I don't believe we've ever seen any except perhaps at Magee Marsh in Ohio a number of falls ago. Many warblers and other migrants have been seen in Philadelphia and its surroundings during the last week and yesterday's perfect weather made a trip to Morris Arboretum irresistible.

One of the first birds I saw was one member of the flycatcher family, the Eastern Phoebe. They weren't around Morris in summer but seem to me passing through in migration. Over the next four hours I saw a number of flycatchers. But they were quiet and mobile. There were no vocal clues as to their identity. I'm just about positive that one or two were Eastern Wood Pewees, a regular bird there.
But what was the bird with the golden orange bill? I hadn't really noticed the color of the bill on this flycatcher until I put my binoculars on it. When I did I was shocked by the brilliant color. It almost looked the the bright mouth interior of feeding young. But it was the bill. I'd never seen a flycatcher with a bill this color before. Of course light can play tricks with color. Still both my visual memory and the photo above show that bright orange color. In one view I didn't see an eyering but at other times I did and the photo above shows a bit of one. It is really a disappointing photo because it just shows a hint of both eyering and orangish lower mandible. Unfortunately the bird didn't stick around. Later in the day I saw another flycatcher with large eyering but it flew before I could put my binoculars on it and see anything more.

Above is the only other photo I could get of the bird. The eyering made me suspect a Yellow-bellied but I saw no yellow on the underside. So I left unsure of what I'd seen. When I got home I was happy to find this in Richard Crossleys's guidebook:

Bill shortish and broad-based, usually all bright, lollipop-orange lower mandible.

. That's not quite enough to confirm it as a Yellow-bellied but it does go a very long way!
As I said it was a perfect day yesterday. I was able to do the two field sketches at top, of a Northern Rough-winged Swallow and Green Heron, all the while debating whether I dare try to sketch the magnificent clouds. I was afraid I'd get nothing else done if I tried so I didn't. Dragonflies were also busy so I also took a number of photos of them. They're beautiful creatures and some day I'd like to do field sketches of them. But their quick movements and complex patterns have me sticking to photos for the time being. Last bird of the day was something I'd given up on seeing: a shorebird. The water seems to be too high 90% of the time this year for shorebirds at Morris. So when I saw this bird with an active tail on the path I suspected Northern Mockingbird, not shorebird. But I soon learned differently. It was a Solitary Sandpiper, picking in the tiny water depression in the path. Eventualy he noticed me and flew by, zigzagging all the way in typcial shorebird fashion.

The Secret Migration

Kenn Kaufman had a great article in my print copy of the newest Bird Watcher's Digest. In it he talked about the 'secret' migration season, the one right now that no one pays any attention to. I'm not going to summarize it but just suggest that you read it yourself. A quick look at the web site didn't find it but if it's not there you can always subscribe or pick up a copy at newstands, assuming they still exist in this for-better-or-worse digital age.

The secret migration is something I've been talking about in some recent posts. It's what helps to get me out in what seems like an enervated time, the end of summer. There are probably many reasons not go  go birding now but for us we know that we may find shorebirds, warblers, flycatchers, hawks(like the osprey today) and who knows what else.

I was at Morris Arboretum mid-week and found three Solitary Sandpipers. One of them is above in a small 7x10 inch watercolor. I may do more with it but probably very little. As usual I don't want to mess it up. Of course by tomorrow fresh eyes may convince me that I just can't leave it as is.(Well a day later and I had to make a few tweaks. The new version has now replaced the old one at top.)

It can take me a long time to do artwork. I can think and plan it to death. Often it's better to just start and learn from what happens rather than trying to  plan perfection from the start. That's pretty  much what I did here.

I spent a lot of time sketching three Solitary Sandpipers at Morris the other day.  Inevitably though  I realized that I got something wrong when I looked  at my collection of photos I've taken. The more detailed one above is pretty good but I finally decided I'd use a similar photo as the basis for this watercolor. It may not seem so but it really is informed by all the time I spent sketching these sandpipers earlier this week. Field sketching is as much  about looking and seeing as it is about getting something down on paper. There is a tremendous amount of learning that goes on. That learning continues when I eventually do a more developed work in the studio. In fact one reason to do more finished work is to try to consolidate, and perhaps remember, all that  I've learned. If  I'm happy with the results it's particularly satisfying.

Also on the pages above are a Northern Rough-winged Swallow, immature American Redstart and poorly remembered Nashville Warbler. Both the Redstart and the Nashville were drawn from memory 30-60 minutes after seeing them. This isn't the ideal way to do things but warblers move so quickly that  often when I see them I'll give up on sketching them because they're here and gone so quickly. Then in a quiet period later, especially if I happen to be sitting down, I'll decide to try  them anyway, just putting down what I remember. What I distinctly remembered about the Nashville were the bright yellow  belly and undertail coverts. What I  forgot was just how much of  the head and back is blue-gray. Much more of the head than I remembered it turns out.

So something gone awry with it but still a very fruitful time outside in the secret migration season and also later in the studio.