A Sapsucker Start

Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers. Lino/Woodcut Proof by Ken Januski.

Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers. Black Lino/Woodcut Proof by Ken Januski.

Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers. Yellow Lino/Woodcut Proof by Ken Januski.

After the complexity and time involved in the last combination linocut/woodcut I decided to make the next print much simpler. My intention was to do a one-color, one block, print much like photo two above. I also wanted to concentrate on a linear linocut, a classic way of doing linos and woodblocks but one I'm largely unfamiliar with.

BUT the tiny bit of red as well as the dirty yellow, almost an off-white, on the Yellow-bellied Sapsucker did present the temptation of just a bit of color. I also found that if I left the tree largely black then it took away from the Sapsuckers. In carving that area away though I found the print just a bit lacking. So that convinced me to add color, again on a woodblock  as in the last print.

The top photo is a proof on copier paper of the black printed on top of the first color. I like it. Unfortunately the color I ended up mixing got a bit oranger than I intended. So the bottom photo above shows the new color on good Hosho paper. This is the real print only without the black overprinted. And it's without any other changes. I'm debating printing a dark brown for the tree, then overprinting in black.

Even if I do this will be a much simpler print than the last one.

I and Jerene have come to very much enjoy Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers when we see them. I'm not sure exactly why. About a month ago I did some Conte sketches that tried to capture their movements as they fed on a tree. That's the basis for this print.

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.

Almost There, Maybe...........

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

The combination linocut, reduction linocut and woodcut is moving slowly along. The woodcut portion is finished, unless I decide on a second woodblock to add some light highlights at the end. The first lino block, which is the reduction lino, is most likely done. Above you can see the result of printing the various colors on the reduction lino on top of the already printed woodblock.

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

The last lino block, at least according to my initial plans, will print last in black. Since it is what will hold much of the final print together I can't resist printing it occasionally along the way, before the reduction lino with all its colors is finished. I do this to get a better idea of what the final print might look like and what changes I might still need to make.

I did that on the previous color of the reduction lino, a color barely visible now, except  in the head of the Black-throated Green. To see how the latest color, the slate gray, might look I've printed in on top of one of the test prints where I printed the black early. What this does is cover up some of the final black but leave enough to give me some idea as to how the final print might look.

For readers not familiar with lino and woodblocks I apologize. This probably seems needlessly complex. And you might well ask: Why Bother? The reason is COLOR. If you have much interest in color as I do, then you need to find some way to print multiple colors. You can only do one color per inking of a block, with some specialized exceptions. So that's it in a nutshell. I want color in my prints and I keep exploring ways to get it. None seem easy. But if a print does work out it is nice to know that I have more than one copy. And there also is a challenge, sometimes fun and sometimes not so much, in the complex interaction of myself and the printmaking process.

That process usually leads to imprecision and surprise. Since I'm not a big fan of precision, except when I'm trying to understand the structure of something, this generally is something I'm happy with. In some sense this type of printmaking demands improvisation. You, or at least I, can't plan it all out in advance. You make your plans and then start improvising!

Your Painting Looks Like Naugahyde

Black-throated Green Warbler. Second stage of Woodcut/Linocut by Ken Januski

I've always been pretty certain about my artwork. Any doubts I have I think are not as strong as those that many artists have. This doesn't necessarily mean I'm correct in my judgment. I may just be wrong or foolishly and blindly optimistic. Still most criticism doesn't bother me all that much.

It may confuse me as I mentioned in a recent post when I get seemingly contradictory opinions from different people at the same time. And then there are of course snide comments that are easily ignored. I've found that snide comments are usually meant for the critics peers more than for the artists criticized. They always reek of groupthink.

However when, many years ago, a woman blurted out in our painting class critique, that my paintings looked like Naugahyde it struck me. And she said it with passion. As though she was really offended that I would paint in such a way. I've always valued such passionate comments even if I disagree with them or don't really understand them. It's easy to tell that they are honest and an honest opinion is a rare thing in the world of art.

What she meant I think was that my paintings, 6'x8' heavily painted abstract acrylic paintings at that time, had resistant, unyielding surfaces, the kind that made your eyes bounce back from rather than go into  the painting. At the time I liked that. It seemed modern. I still admire many artists who work or worked in that manner. Stuart Davis, a great American painter in my mind, quickly comes to mind.

I happened to think of this as I was working on this print. The first color on the Shina plywood looked somewhat transparent and watery in some versions. As I printed the ink got thicker and it turned into a more unyielding surface, like that which so offended my fellow student.

One reason for using the plywood, outside of plain old curiosity, was that I thougth I might like its surface, especially in the background of a print. So I experimented with this and when I finally printed the first color of this print on good paper( Rives Heavyweight) I kept the ink thin. As I did this I remembered the old Naugahyde comment.

So today when I went to color number two, this time on the first lino block, I also sought a thinner less reflective surface. I don't think I've ever worked this way in my linos. Certainly the Green Heron lino had very thick heavy ink.

But this time I'm going to try to keep it thin and see what happens. This lino block will be reduction, which means that I'll remove some of the lino and then print different colors on the lino that remains. Finally I'll print black on the second lino, and hope that it all holds together and that I don't have to get out a fourth block to do some mending. At the moment I'm hopeful. And I finally understand that Naugahyde comment!

A Dragonfly a Day

Widow Skimmer. Watercolor sketch by Ken Januski

The woodcut/linocut/reduction linocut went a bit awry yesterday so I took a break and organized my collection of dragonfly photos, including some new ones from the last few weeks. As I looked at them I remembered part of what I found so fascinating about drawing insects when I did so quite a few years ago.

There is a complexity and elegance of structure that's just very desirable to put down on paper. Unlike birds or most animals there aren't any soft, furry, feathery areas that are indistinct and hide the structure. Insects have very visible structures.

It's hard to understand the appeal of this but it may just be something natural to drawing. i.e. drawing is more often about lines than anything else and insects are full of them. Of course with dragonflies there is something extra. They often have the most striking patterns in wings, body or both. Here it's the velvet blacks and blazing white of the wings of this Widow Skimmer that stand out.

I started paying attention to dragonflies and damselflies a year or two ago but it's only now that I can accurately (I think!) name more than ten of them. Naming twenty would be a great stretch. Above is a photo of the first Widow Skimmer I've ever seen. We saw it at Morris Arboretum over the past few weeks. It's a fairly common dragonfly I think and it's also a member of one of the most visible families, the Skimmers. So it's not rare. But it sure is a beauty.

About a month ago I was contorted in a somewhat odd position to take a photo of an unknown butterfly along the Wissahickon. Two runners went by and said "Weird!" as they did so. I suppose it can seem odd to some, to stop and pay attention to the beauty and complexity of nature. But then I have to ask just what is it that others find so much more interesting than nature? I'm sure there are plenty of things. At one point in my life I might have also found them quite interesting, far more so than birds, butterflies and dragonflies. But today I'd just say '"Weird!".

By the way I'm not really starting a  Dragonfly a Day project. These types of projects seem popular online, at least from what I can see. But it is something I could easily see someone more focused on dragonflies than myself taking up! They offer a lot to both viewers and artists.

More Lino Experiments

Black-throated Green Warbler. Woodcut proof by Ken Januski

Black-throated Green Warbler. Woodcut proof by Ken Januski

I'm currently reading Rebecca Salter's Japanese Popular Prints: From Votive Slips to Playing Cards. I've only just started it but one thing that jumped out at me was the statement that when these prints were most popular the carvers of prints were often more famous than the artists on whose work they were based. I'm sure I've heard this before but I hadn't yet tried printmaking myself. Now that I have I can begin to appreciate the importance of the carver.

Obviously I'm doing nothing vaguely similar to what those great printmakers and carvers did. But the more I print the more I realize how complicated it is and how much subtlety can be achieved. And of course there is always something new that can go wrong. I think it's the realization, through experience, of all that can go wrong that is so striking.

In any case I'm trying a few new things on this print. As anyone who has followed my two-three year lino career might guess I've changed styles to a certain degree, going from work that involves much more complex pattern, especially that achieved through hatching, to flatter planes of color. Actually I'm combining them both and only time will tell if that is a smart idea. Completely flat areas of color, almost like a silkscreen, are not really to my tastes though, so I think I'll always go for some sort of gradation, through hatching or otherwise, to break the flatness. I'm currently doing a lot of carving of line and then gouging out of unwanted areas rather than doing everything with a v gouge and leaving all sorts of patterns from the gouge but I suspect I'll always keep some of the latter.

Above are two proofs of the background color done on the Shina plywood I mentioned in the last post. I've decided that this will be the background color and everthing else will go on top of it. The final color will probably be lighter, but this gives me some idea. Generally when I proof I do so on copier paper. But I had some leftover ink today and realized I could print on the back of some rejected prints on good paper. The advantage of this is that early on I get a more realistic idea of what the print will look like on good paper. Since I'm printing by hand, rather than through a press, the color is generally not as full and rich as it is on copier paper. This can be seen above. I'm still not sure which look I prefer, the rich flat look of the copier paper, or the more translucent look of the good printing paper.

When I do color prints I normally do reduction prints, where everything is done on just one block. I have to proof on good paper as I go along because once I print a color I'll carve it away. There is no going back for later proofs of an earlier color. With this print I'm using one woodcut for the background, a linoleum block for most of the colors, and it will have some reduction, and another lino just in black for the final color. That's the plan anyway. I hope that it will allow me a little more flexibility and ease as I print. So this combination of woodcut, linocut and reduction linocut is another experiment here.

And of course color and ink is always an area of exploration, intentional or otherwise. I still have a long way to go before I feel completely in control of the ink. As I said, so many things to think about!

Black-throated Green Warbler. Reduction Lino Proof by Ken Januski

After I'd posted this I found that the hot weather drove me back to the lino -- too warm to do anything outside. Since I have three blocks going at the same time here it was easy to pick up the reduction lino block and finish off the clearing out of the background and much of the bird. I've proofed it in water-based ink on copier paper above. Since I just wanted to test it I used black ink. But tomorrow or the next day I'll proof it in the yellows and olives of the Black-throated Green and perhaps some other greens/browns/grays. This is the most complicated block since it will use the reduction method. It will print on top of the Shina woodblock at top of page and in turn have tht black master lino block printed on top of it. Or so's the plan.

Return to Linocuts

Black-throated Green Warbler. First stage of Lino by Ken Januski

I hate to think how long it's been since I last did a linocut. This seems particularly bad since Jerene bought me a new set of Japanese carving tools for Christmas last year. But things happen and I seem to wait for the spirit, or some such thing, to move me before I return to linocuts after a hiatus.

This is the very first stage of the print. It's only 4x6 inches. And I'm trying something new here: cutting a master block as a guide for all of the others. So when this is finished it will just have the areas that I intend to leave black. Then I'll take a wet print and rub it onto another lino and use it as a guide for additional colors.

In fact I might do something more: add the background color on Shina plywood. One of my favorite printmaking suppliers, McClains, is having a sale. So I recently bought a number of pieces of this plywood to test it out.

Part of the thrill of linocut to me is the improvisatory aspect. But it's also the most wearing and tense. So I'm trying this master block idea to see if I can still have some spontaneity in my prints without paying the price of weeks of worry!

Right now I expect three or four other colors, but only time will tell.

In Memory of a Young Robin

Dead Juvenile American Robin. Watercolor by Ken Januski

It's now breeding season for birds and has been for a month or more. Since we decided to volunteer for bluebird nest monitoring at Morris Arboretum this year we've gotten some first hand experience with breeding birds. At the same time we often seen breeding birds 'in the wild' so to speak as well. Recently we've seen Red-eyed Vireos, Eastern Kingbirds and Baltimore Orioles on nests. Earlier in the year we saw Blue-gray Gnatcatchers. Soon we'll see Orchard Orioles I'm sure, if we can just follow them to their nests.

And of course one of the most common nesting birds we've seen is the American Robin. A loud thunk in our backyard this morning reminded me of how difficult the process to adult bird can be. Even though we have windows with closed blinds that shouldn't fool a bird into thinking open space and safety lies just through the glass this poor juvenile managed to hit our window anyway. Since it's on the second floor and away from most predators it's not easy to understand what happened.

Jerene saw him from our bedroom window and yelled out to me. But when I got out a ladder to check on the roof on which he'd landed he wasn't there. Perhaps he'd survived? But then I looked in the gutter. Sad to say he was there and no longer alive. It's always sad to see dead birds like this. One thing that an artist can do is at least try to make a sketch or painting of them, both for knowledge's sake and as a sort of memorial. That's the case with this sketch and watercolor.

Trellises and Other Garden News

Brand New Bamboo Bean Trellis.

I get a lot of email. Who doesn't? Much is from organizations we belong to. Like most people I glance at it and immediately get rid of 80-90%. But when I got an email from Seed Savers Exchange and saw that there was an article on the best garden trellises I had to take a look.

We have a very small yard though some would say it's relatively large by big city standards. Just about the first thing we did when we bought the house was put in eight 4'x8' raised beds. They've decayed and disintegrated many times over the years so last year I put in the newest version. Hopefully it will last a bit longer than some of the others.

We do like to garden, for both food and for flowers and/or aesthetics. But we also like to feed the birds and create a habitat that will be welcoming to them. This creates a problem in a small space. There just isn't room for all that we try to do. Still we do manage to make enough compromises to both garden and have a bird-friendly yard.

Oregon Giant Snow Peas on Old Pea Trellis.

A major structural part of our food gardening is trellises. We need to have a way to hold up the various things that grow to tall heights, in particular Fortex pole beans from Johnnys Seeds. They are vigorous, delicious, rarely tough even at the greatest length, and last until late fall. The bamboo trellis at top was taken directly from the SSE blog. I think it will be much sturdier than the bamboo and twine trellis that I've used in the past.

In the lower left of the photo above you can see the remaining Oregon Giant Snow Peas barely holding up to their cedar stake and twine trellis. Overabundant rain nearly brought them to the ground. But they've been delicious. Last night we celebrated Father's Day with a satay stir fry of these peas, chicken and soba noodles.

But I've been getting very anxious. I should have the beans in by now, not to mention the cucumbers. So today I finally pulled them out, harvesting at least another 50 large snow peas as I did so. That raised bed now holds the new beans and bean trellis. Just behind the bed the Monarda is just about to bloom, just in time we hope to attract Ruby-throated Hummingbirds/

Half of the Raised Beds.

Last week when it was too wet to go into the garden I took the photo above from our bedroom window. It's a nice view of four of the raised beds, two New Dawn roses and Jackmanii clematis on some very complex trellises I built for them a number of years ago, and an ancient plastic composter. At lower right a Winterberry, much loved by American Robins and others fights for space with the raised bed.

Greens Raised Bed and Lettuce and Eggplant Raised Bed.

Yesterday my wife's outdoor cat, a very likeable cat but one that does damage both to local birds and to my raised beds, decided to put those giant litter boxes I'd built for him to use, killing a eggplant seedling as he did so. Out came the poultry netting that I'd ordered  and just received thinking that such an event might be on the horizon. Hopefully it will also deter the squirrels that love to sample the eggplants and other vegetables the day before they're ready to pick. Above a view of our greens raised bed in background with Chard, Beet Greens and Dandelion Greens. In the foreground are the remaining eggplants (raised from seed so smaller than I'd like), some Arugula and heirloom lettuces.

Heirloom Lettuces.

And finally a photo of some of those heirloom lettuces, Forellenschluss and Amish Deer Tongue among others. They'll probably bolt and go to seed all too soon. But for now they make the best lunches in the world.

It's not often that I write about our garden. But it is a big part of our lives and the Seed Savers Exchange blog gave me an excuse to write about it. Now time to get back to art.

Doing What I Love

Yellow-crowned Night Heron. Conte Drawing by Ken Januski.

I realize that any complaints I make about my art, its acceptance in juried exhibitions, etc. as in the last post is always going to be subject to the possible charge of 'sour grapes' and/or 'artistic whining.' The odd thing is I have no sympathy with either, especially the latter.

It is no doubt true that most artists of whatever sort cannot make a living from their art. That just seems patently true and not open to argument. I wish it were not so. And I suppose I could complain about that, especially when compared to the amount of money that goes to sports and some of the idiocy that is on television. But it seems fruitless. I wish our culture cared more for art but it doesn't. Silly to complain about it.

The other side of this though and where I criticize the self-pitying artist is that I have no doubt that I'm doing what I love and that I'm exceedingly lucky to be able to do so!

My Studio - June 2013.

I thought of this a week or two ago as I looked about my studio, seen above. I think I might have been reading a book on birds or dragonflies at the time. I realized that I am now able to combine two of my great loves, art and nature, and spend most of each day on them. If I don't get distracted by other things this really is the perfect setup for me personally. It would be nice to get greater appreciation of course. But seen from the perspective of being able to spend most of each day being able to do what I love, it's very hard to complain.

My love of art I think is older than my love of nature and the outdoors though I recall that even in grade school I couldn't stand having lunch in the classroom and would instead ride my bike over to the nearby woods and have it there. I also remember being scared out of my skin once or twice when I found snakes crawling near me. I don't think I've ever fully recovered to the one crawling through the spokes of my bike.

In any case I think it's a lucky person who can spend most of their time with lifelong loves. It would of course be nice to see more income from this but outside of that I truly do think I'm a very lucky person.

Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers. Conte Drawing by Ken Januski.

I've continued to experiment with Conte crayon sketches. At top is an immature Yellow-crowned Night Heron seen at the Manayunk Canal in Philadelphia almost three summers ago. Above are a couple of studies of Yellow-bellied Sapsuckers. I particularly liked them because the photos showed some clue as to their structure, one that as in many woodpeckers is hard to decipher because of their complex feather patterns. In all of these sketches I've tried to accentuate the structure and not worry about superficial details. That to me is one of the appeals of Conte. If forces you to work somewhat broadly as Rembrandt did so successfully in his sketches.