Pushing On With Watercolor and Sumi Brush Pen

Adult and Juvenile Sora at Tinicum. Sumi Brush Pen and Watercolor by Ken Januski.

I'm not sure why it is that members of the rail family are among our favorite birds. I'm sure partially it's due to their relative rarity and to their general secrecy. But when you see them you also realize that they have a very subtle beauty to them. Not exactly Scarlet Tanagers or Cape May Warblers but striking all the same.

We were at Tinicum (aka John Heinz NWR) the other day looking for some of the collection of unusual birds that have been there recently. These sora were among them and they were very cooperative in staying out in the open for us to look at them. There was also a third adult that made a brief appearance.

I did a couple mediocre sumi brush pen field sketches of them and of one of the two Tri-colored Heron. I'm not showing them because I pretty much ruined them by trying to add color back in the studio. But I did take a number of photos. Because they were so striking I decided to do another 12x16 sumi and watercolor painting of them. It's based on a number of photos, and my memory of the birds.

My favorite watercolor artists generally use it in a much more gentle, fresher and more subtle way than I do. I can greatly admire their work. But when I try to work in that way I'm generally disappointed with the results. But I still want to work in watercolor. The sense of light and freshness that it can have is just too desirable to ignore. So I keep trying. This is the fifth of the larger, for me, 12x16 paintings with watercolor and sumi brush pen.

Eventually I'll turn back to printmaking but for now it makes sense to keep pushing on with this combination of media. It feels liberating to be working at a larger scale, though it's nowhere near the 72x96 inch abstract paintings that I used to do. In any case I feel like I might finally be able to get to where watercolor is a comfortable, or at least somewhat comfortable, medium for me if I continue working at this size and with these media. So I will keep at this for awhile.

Though I did start reading a new book on Japanese woodblock printmaking, and that is already teasing me with the thought of returning to wood blocks.

Dragonflycatchers, Tomatoes and Tidbits

Flycatchers are among the comparatively small number of birds expert enough to catch dragon flies on the wing, and these insects are too wary to be taken sitting.

Arthur Cleveland Bent, Life Histories of North American Flycatchers, Larks, Swallows and Their Allies, p.218, Least Flycatcher entry. Published by Dover Books, 1963.

Eastern Wood Pewee Eating Dragonfly. Watercolor Sketch by Ken Januski

Flycatcher Eating Dragonfly. Photo by Ken Januski.

After seeing what I'm just about positive was a very early Least Flycatcher this week I have been reading Arthur Cleveland Bent's book noted above. I was quite surprised, though perhaps I shouldn't have been, to read how unusual it is for birds to be able to catch dragonflies. Along with the Least Flycatcher we saw numerous other flycatchers, mainly Eastern Wood Pewees and Traill's Flycatcher. I say Traill's because I think a couple of birds were Willow Flycatchers. But since they didn't call there is no way to separate the more likely Willow from the nearly identical Alder. The photo above, from that day is most likely a Eastern Wood Pewee, though the glare and washed out color remove a lot of the field marks that could confirm this. Above is a watercolor sketch I did a few years ago of an Eastern Wood Pewee about to swallow a rather large dragonfly. I do love both flycatchers and dragonflies so their combination, though bad luck for the dragonflies, is quite interesting  to me.

Cherokee Purple, Unger's Cherry, Stupice, Brandywine, Mexico Midget, Tasty Evergreen, Cherokee Purple and Yellow Pear Tomatoes. Photo by Ken Januski.

Also interesting and tasty to boot are all of the tomatoes that are now coming ripe in our garden. All of them above are grown from seed from Seed Saver's Exchange though the very small Mexico Midget are volunteers from seeds planted years ago that keep reseeding year after year. I'm not complaining! I don't often show much from our garden but I did want to show these beautiful and tasty tomatoes.

Killdeer Chick, Young Green Heron and Great Blue Heron. Sumi Brush Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

Though I've been out birding a fair amount this week I've done very few sketches. Above are two of the young Killdeer which I said in an earlier post are too bad to show. Oh  well. On the facing page a young Green Heron and beneath him a striding Great Blue Heron. I'm really only showing this to show that I'm still working in the field with the sumi brush pen and because I like the Great Blue Heron sketch.

Below a less successful Great Blue Heron, sideways Green Heron and young Wood Duck from Morris Arboretum today. Though there's not much to the Wood Duck sketch I do like it. To a certain extent these sum sketches are accomplishing what I want: they are simple, get a sense of the pose, and might be enough to spur me on to a print or painting.

Wood Duck, Great Blue Heron and Green Heron. Sumi Brush Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

Rendering the Experience, the Photo, or the Picture Postcard

Ruby-throated Hummingbird on Monarda in Backyard. Sumi Brush Pen and Watercolor by Ken Januski.

I always feel a bit guilty showing work of mine that is largely based on photos. That's because I'm so critical of art based on photos. That was the case with the Killdeer in my last post. The more I've painted though, especially since I turned from abstraction to naturalism the more I realize that photos aren't anathema. They're just very dangerous.

But I think it would be safe to say that the vast majority of people who look at my work, or most art, are very partial to work that looks like a photo. And that's why I'm so adamantly against it. The general populace now gauges reality through photos, even though they are very limited and show only one aspect of objects portrayed.

Still I use them occasionally because they help me to remember all the details that I often can't seem to force into my memory. In that sense they are a useful aid to memory(aide memoire).

More often though I'd like to portray the experience of something. If you've ever seen a Ruby-throated Hummingbird you probably realize that they rarely sit still. They are always moving, well almost always. And the movement is more emblematic of them than  those rare times when they perch.

So the 12x16 watercolor above is done strictly from memory. I've looked at the Ruby-throated Hummingbirds in our yard a lot over the last few summers. That doesn't mean that I also haven't missed a lot. But I wanted to do something spontaneous that was based on my memory of them and of the Monarda on which they often feed. The painting above is meant to render just one hummingbird, not a number of them. And within a few seconds just one hummingbird will have been in that many different positions.

So which is more 'real', the painting above, or one that captures every iridescent feather in a sitting bird that looks like it's been stuffed?

As I started to write this brief post I was going to stick to the dichotomy between rendering an experience and rendering a photo. But I realized that there is also a third alternative and that is the picture postcard. It is more like a picturesque rendering of a scene, relying more on sentimental formula than anything else. I don't see that much of this sort of art, but I'm sure that's only because I try to steer clear of places that concentrate on cute art. Still it is one of the other ways in which artists try to portray what they see, especially in terms of birds and wildlife.

Another Killdeer Painting

Killdeer and Chick. Watercolor Painting by Ken Januski.

I'm still hoping to do another large watercolor and sumi brush pen painting over the next few days but there was something that kept nagging me about the young Killdeer that I saw along the Manayunk Canal. last week. So finally I broke down and did this small 7x10 watercolor of one adult and one of the young. It is very closely based on some photos that I took.

As I was doing this I was also listening to some music by Igor Stravinsky and reading about him. Though I'm not an expert, not even  a pseudo-expert, nor even an aficianado of classical music I think it's safe to say that he was the most revolutionary 'classical' composer of the 20th century and the most influential. Everything I hear by him sounds fresh.

When I think about most wildlife art, or for that matter art period, it often seems of another era, perhaps reminiscent of baroque music, perhaps romantic 19th century music, or in the case of fine art, stuck in an endless loop around Marcel Duchamp's 'Urinal' of about 100 years ago. There is not much that seems as fresh as Stravinsky.

I don't know the answer to this, nor do I know if it needs an answer. I still love music by Handel and Bach, to name just a few older composers. It is thrilling to listen to today even if it doesn't seem timely. The same is true of the art of Piero della Francesca, Rembrandt, Velasquez to name just a few older artists. It's hard to criticize contemporary art that emulates people like that.

I only mention this because I think the watercolor above is more an homage to much older work than anything else. Much of my other work tries to achieve the freshness of Stravinsky, though I think it rarely does. Still it is a worthy goal.

Raptors Overhead, Watercolor Off the Easel

Adult and Two Juvenile Great-crested Flycatchesrs. Watercolor and Sumi Brush Pen Painting by Ken Januski.
 

I think I mentioned recently that I've been hoping to do some more developed work for an international competition whose deadline is fast approaching. After all those sumi brush pen sketches I finally bit the bullet and started work on the 16x20 inch watercolor and sumi brush pen painting above. I've wanted to make a painting of a scene similar to this for the last 18 months or so ever since I saw one or two adult and two juvenile Great-crested Flycatchers all together at Morris Arboretum last spring. This is based on various photos from that day. We've seen another 3-4 Great-crested at the same location over the last few weeks so maybe that is what spurred me on to this subject.

I still have a bit of time before the competition so there may still be one more painting using this medium in the near future. In the past I've entered this competition twice and had my linocuts accepted twice. But I lost money on all the various costs involved. Even if I'd sold I would have lost money because prints are almost by definition less expensive than paintings. So this year I've decided to enter some paintings and perhaps a couple of woodcuts. We shall see.

Peregrine Falcon Flying Over Backyard. Photo by Ken Januski.

It was after a 12 hour day exhibiting at the Manayunk Arts Festival in 2012 that I hiked up hill to our house. As soon as I got a block away from Main St. and the festival I heard a shrill cry. When I looked up I saw at least one and maybe more raptors. Almost immediately I realized that they must be part of the peregrine family from the nearby church steeple. That was in fact the case and just a half block away were birders keeping track of the adults and the newly fledged young. Later that summer we often heard the same shrill cries overhead in our backyard and saw up to three peregrines at the same time flying high overhead.

We heard and saw them again in the summer of 2013 then not at all in 2014, though they had again bred at the church. They bred again this year, though I never saw them in my few trips to the church. But just this week Jerene heard their cries again. She heard and saw them briefly on Tuesday and Wednesday. So yesterday I sat out in the back with camera binoculars hoping to do the same. No luck. Then at the same time today we heard then saw two of them. I was ready with binoculars and camera but almost immediately they flew into the sun and were gone. I was only able to get the one grainy photo above, most likely a juvenile.

It's amazing to me to know that they breed near here. It's almost more amazing to see some, and I assume that they're the same ones, flying over our backyard!!

Osprey Flying Over Manayunk Canal. Photo by Ken Januski.

Not quite as surprising but just as welcome a sight was this Osprey seen about a half mile downhill along the Manayunk Canal yesterday.

Two Juvenile Killdeer at Manayunk Canal. Photo by Ken Januski.

This time of year can also bring shorebirds and sometimes Night Herons to the canal so I've been looking recently. I've often suspected that Killdeer breed there. Yesterday that was confirmed when I saw these two very young Killdeer with one of their parents at the canal. They always look like a ping pong ball on stilts. I did a couple of not quite successful sumi field sketches which I'm not going to show here. But I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually appear in a print or painting.

July is often considered a dull time for birding. But that certainly has not been my experience.

May You Be Forever Sketching

Willow Flycatchers. Sumi Brush Pen Sketches by Ken Januski.

As I was completing the two pages above in a Stillman and Birn Epsilon sketchbook yesterday I was thinking about how much I've been enjoying drawing recently, especially with the sumi brush pen. Then on the radio I heard a version of Bob Dylan's 'May You Stay Forever Young,' a song I've always very much liked. It seemed to parallel my feelings about sketching: may I and anyone else who likes to draw continue to do so. It is hugely rewarding.

Cedar Waxwing, Fish Crow, et al. Sumi Brush Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

I mentioned on another post that many of these sumi sketches have been based on my own photos. I started somewhere near the beginning of my boxes of them, all alphabetically sorted. As you can see with the Willow Flycatchers above I'm reaching the end. There are no local birds whose names start with 'Z'. That just leaves 'Y', with all those Yellow Something-or-Other birds.

I've also tried to continue using the sumi brush pen when I'm out birding. It creates a line that is a little too large for the size of the sketchbook that I carry in my back pocket. But I'm getting better at being able to use finesse and sensitivity of touch to be able to work this small. Above a Cedar Waxwing and young Green Heron, both seen along the nearby Manayunk Canal, and a Fish Crow on telephone pole and as yet unidentified wasp on the flowers of our Mountain Mint, both seen while I sat in a chair in our backyard.

Grass Spider and Wasp, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, et al. Sumi Brush Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

I spent about 10-15 minutes watching the scene above in our backyard, just a foot away from where I sat, through my Pentax Papilio Extreme Close-Focus Binoculars. (I'm not trying to name drop in this post but when a product works well, like Stillman and Birn sketchbooks, the Kuretake Sumi Brush Pen and the Pentax extreme close focus binoculars I'm happy to mention them in case others might want to use them. In fact I only know about the binoculars due to a talk by an accomplished local birder on Birding Beyond Birds, e.g. dragonflies, butterflies, etc. where he mentioned how good they were).

For the first time ever we've noticed a not of three-dimensional spider webs in our yard. They can be as deep as they are broad. As I watched the small wasp and the spider in the web I really couldn't figure out what was going on. Both were upside down. Was the wasp trapped and desperately trying to get out? If so why did he sometimes seem to approach the spider rather than vice versa? Was the web sticky, like most are? If so why did he seem to move so freely. As I watched it through the binoculars, mainly so I could see the spider better, I decided I might as well try to get it down on paper. That is the scene in upper left.

Later when I went inside I investigated and found that the spider is most likely a 'Grass Spider', one of many funnel spiders, whose webs are not sticky. This spider is also timid and will often run from whatever is in its web. Well that pretty well explains what I saw here. It is amazing how much there is to see in nature if you take the time to look.

Also on the page one of the visiting Ruby-throated Hummingbirds, feeding on the Monarda in the yard, and a Willow Flycatcher at Morris Arboretum, the same bird portrayed from photos at the top.

Whimbrel and White Ibis. Sumi Brush Pen Sketch by Ken Januski.

There is a big juried show coming up that I'm preparing to submit work for. No it is not Birds in Art. In any case as I continue to do sumi brush pen drawings from my photos I'm always thinking about which ones could be used for something more developed. Above are two pages of Whimbrel, seen in Cape May, NJ over the last few years, and an immature White Ibis seen at Heinz NWR in Philadelphia a number of years ago. I never know until I do the drawings which resulting drawing might convince me that it is the one to develop more. Time will tell. There are only a couple of weeks before submissions are due to I'll need to decide soon.

Common Whitetail., Killdeer, Great Blue Heron in Tree, et al.  Sumi Brush Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

And finally a couple more small sketchbook pages of sumi brush pen sketches from life. Except for the Common Whitetail at top left, all of the images are from the Manayunk Canal a few days ago: another immature Green Heron, with nearby Killdeer, and three versions of a Great Blue Heron curled in various intriguing shapes up in a tree.

I realize that in switching from pen or pencil to sumi brush pen in my field sketches I'm losing a lot of detail. But I think I'm gaining life and/or animation as well as a greater concentration on the entire scene, all of which are helpful in doing a more developed painting or print. It's well worth it to me. And it probably has something to do with why I have a renewed excitement about the possibilities of drawing.

Gulls, Terns, Watercolor, Sumi Brush Pen

Forster's Terns, Laughing and Bonaparte's Gulls at "The Meadows.' Watercolor and Sumi Brush Pen by Ken Januski.

At least once a year, sometimes more, I try a more energetic, spontaneous type of watercolor. Though I'm excited with them as I start by the end of the day or maybe a day or two later I've become disappointed again. They haven't lived up to my expectations.

This year though I'm still happy with the Red Knots and other birds from Cooks Beach, NJ that I showed a week or two ago. Something seemed to work well in that combination of sumi brush pen and watercolor. Perhaps the larger size, at least for me, of 12x16 inches helped. In any case after weeks of sumi brush pen studies I wanted to get back to a larger work.

This is it above. I have long wanted to do something with a photo I took at 'The Meadows' in Cape May, NJ about three years ago. The combination of Laughing Gull with wings up in the air, smaller Bonaparte's Gull and even smaller Forster's Terns was appealing. I just couldn't figure out how to do it without it looking like a blatant copy of a photo.

Finally I decided that adding some other birds, including the Forster's Tern coming in for a landing might give it a bit more energy and depth and help prevent it from looking like a staged scene. I'm largely happy with it. The potential problem with this type of more spontaneous work is that in working quickly, you'll make a mistake, either in a bird itself or in the proportion or scale of birds in relation to one another. This type of thing can be worked out in studies for more finished work but it seems antithetical to the type of spontaneous work I'm trying to achieve here.

As I said I generally only do one or two more energetic watercolors like this each year. I'm generally so disappointed in the first one that I don't return to it. But that's not the case with these last two sumi and watercolor paintings. So this time I expect to do a few more and see if I can't come up with a semi-permanent way of working in watercolor.

Inspiration Is The Reward of Persistence

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. Sumi Brush Pen Sketch by Ken Januski.

There is a fairly convoluted source of the title of this post. I have been listening to Robert Greenberg's course for The Teaching Company on composer Igor Stravinsky. As he was talking about how Stravinsky studied composition with the composer Rimsky-Korsakov he quoted Stephen Walsh, from his book Stravinsky: A Creative Spring: Russia and France, 1882-1934, on Rimsky-Korsakov's working methods. He was old school and regimented and believed that "inspiration was the reward of persistence."

The reason that I even noticed this I think is that I'm now on about the 50th sheet of sketches from my own photos of birds using the Kuretake Sumi Brush Pen. Why in the world am I doing this? It almost seems like penance, though there is no denying the pleasure in using the brush pen. But for all the pleasure there's a lot of pain. Almost every page has at least one mistake on it, where I wish that I'd made a different mark rather than the one I did. Some pages are all mistakes.

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher. Sumi Brush Pen Sketch by Ken Januski.

My thought has been that I am learning something. By having to decide on just one unerasable line for the top of the head, or the chin, or the curve of the breast I'm making decisions and learning something. I think that the bulk of what anyone learns come from making decisions. They may be right or wrong but you don't really learn much until you invest in a decision.

There's also a bit of hope in this. I'm hoping that it will pay off, especially as I get to page 50 and it doesn't look significantly better than page 1. But still I think that at some point it will pay off, that at some point I'll spontaneously put to work all that I've learned and that the work will look spontaneous, not labored.

So I hope you can see where this quote regarding Rimsky-Korsakov was so striking to me. And it does ring true. Sometimes for me my most inspired, or at any rate the least labored work, will come after a long time doing studies of some sort. Below are two more pages from the recent spate of sketches with the sumi brush pen.

Purple Finch. Sumi Brush Pen Sketch by Ken Januski.

Ruby-crowned Kinglet. Sumi Brush Pen Sketch by Ken Januski.

I'm most likely going to kill off one of my web sites soon and replace it with pages right here. You can see some of the replacement pages in the links on the upper right under Gallery. It was easy to choose some woodcuts and linocuts to use as examples of my work. But due to moving from one computer to another over the last few years I've lost track of many of the photos of my own field sketches.

So today I went through the sketchbooks for the last 6-7 years, back to my very first incredibly feeble attempts at drawing birds from life, and scanned a number of them into the computer. Two of the most recent are below. In the first I added watercolor to the pencil sketches after I got back home. In the second I added wash using Caran d'Ache Neo-color II water soluble crayons in the field to the Black-crowned Night Heron and Yellow-breasted Chat.

Though there is still a lot of room for improvement I think you can see some improvement compared to the earlier sketches below them.

Wood Thrush, Acadian Flycatcher, Red-eyed Vireo. Field Sketch by Ken Januski with watercolor added later.

Black-crowned Night Heron and Yellow-breasted Chat. Field Sketch with Neo-color II Crayon wash by Ken Januski.

All in all I'm glad that I've pursued sketching birds from life. There is just one primary source for that: Drawing Birds by John Busby who just recently passed away. It was that book, later complemented by the artists who then frequented the Wildlife Art thread of Birdforum that convinced me that working from life was the primary method of making wildlife art alive. Even more it convinced me that wildlife art could be ART.

Green Heron, Belted Kingfisher, Cedar Waxwing... Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

Baltimore Oriole, Rose-breasted Grosbeak, Red-headed Woodpecker... Field Sketch by Ken Januski.


There are some artists who can do field studies that are far more realistic and accurate than most wildlife artists can do spending hours in their studio. But I'm not one of them. Neither was John Busby as far as I can tell. .He was more interested in capturing the life of birds. In doing so he also turned them into art.

So my field sketches never look at all finished. But that's really unimportant. To me they are generally exciting. And eventually, after all that perseverance, they tend to inspire me to more finished work.  Thank you Mr. Rimsky-Korsakov!

Canada Geese, Common Grackle... Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

White Ibis, Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Chipmunk... Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

Seduced by Sum Brush Pen Studies

Osprey. Sumi Brush Pen Studies by Ken Januski.

Ovenbirds. Sumi Brush Pen Studies by Ken Januski.

This hasn't been much of a June so far. Either too hot and muggy to spend much time outside, or too wet to spend much time outside. So I've spent far more time, and ink, using the Kuretake Sumi Brush Pen than I ever would have anticipated. But it is addicting nonetheless.

I think that there are a couple of reasons for this: one has to do with the pen itself -- it makes very fluid strokes. But the other has nothing to do with the pen. It is instead the thrill I've always found in sketches that capture animation, from Rembrandt to some cartoons. I do think there is an almost primordial appeal to art that translates marks into an evocation of a lively, moving body, whether it belongs to humans or animals. Almost like a magic capturing of spirit.

My background is as a formal, abstract artist. Among my many teachers was a famous woman artist in California whose somewhat diaristic art garnered her many avid female (mainly) students. Though I wasn't fond of the adoring followers or the diaristic aspect of the art it was honest as could be I think. I greatly liked her. But she did say one thing that stuck with me when she critiqued my work as a graduate student in art: it was very good formally she said but it didn't seem to be ABOUT anything.

This has never bothered me, the fact that my art was formal and not about anything in particular. But when I started to work from nature I suddenly found that it was ABOUT something. That in turn allowed me to indulge in my liking for art that captured animation, the sense of liveliness in subjects.

So once I started using the sumi brush pen I found that I liked many of my drawings, even though most were done from my photos, because they did seem co capture the animation of birds, the sense of the postures they take, the way the weight is distributed, etc., etc.

Palm Warblers. Sumi Brush Pen Studies by Ken Januski.

Least Sandpipers. Sumi Brush Pen Studies by Ken Januski.

And so with the weather keeping me inside more or less I've continued to do these 11x14 sketches of birds with the sumi brush pen. I'm up to about 40 pages in about 10 days I thnk. Besides the sense of animation there is something else that is very important I think that the pen forces me to do: SIMPLIFY.  I've actually not simplified that much in the sketches of Least Sandpipers immediately above and I think they suffer a bit from it. I got carried away I think trying to show too many of the beautiful feathers. Photography allows us to see the details in feathers and feather patterns that we don't really see with the naked eye. When they're right there in front of us in a photo it's tempting to try to put them all down. But it's far more productive I think to just suggest the feathers by simplifying. It certainly creates a more lively work by simplifying them.

So I may be able to make just two marks for the bill, one above and one below. Even the line separating the two may be too much. So I have to look closely at the photos and then decide which few lines I want to put down. Not all of these work. There are many mistakes and missteps. But there are others that I'm quite happy with. They simply capture the sense of the bird. And they look alive.

Northern Mockingbirds and Pintails Sumi Brush Pen Studies by Ken Januski.

As I said in another post I'm unhappy that I've been able to do so few field sketches with the new brush. Below you see my two newest attempts. Not much to write home about. I think part of the problem is that the sketchbook is too small for the brush, this being a much smaller Moleskine sketchbook. Also I don't have as solid a surface to paint on since I'm holding the sketchbook in one hand and that's not as stable as a table. And of course my subjects are quite uncooperative and move on me. But there are compensations with sketching from life: like the Great Crested Flycatcher eating a Red Admiral butterfly. I thought he had a dragonfly. Until I put the binoculars on him in his new location and saw the unmistakable outer wing edges of a beautiful Red Admiral.

I do like the very simple Gray Catbird at bottom right. And I'm confident that this brush pen will eventually come in very handy in the field.

Carolina Wren, Great Crested Flycatcher with Red Admiral and Gray Catbird. Sumi Brush Pen Field Sketches by Ken Januski.

Picture-winged Fly, Veery and Common Grackle.  Sumi Brush Pen Field Sketches by Ken Januski.

After I'd posted this I decided to try to combine sumi brush pen and watercolor, in my years old quest to get a vigorous watercolor that still looked like something more than random marks. This still remains a goal of mine. With that said this is a 12x16 watercolor with underlying sumi brush pen sketch on Arches 140# paper. It's based on a number of shorebirds, mainly Red Knots, Ruddy Turnstones and Dunlin seen at Cooks Beach, NJ in May.

Red Knot and Other Shorebirds at Cooks Beach. Sumi Brush Pen and Watercolor by Ken Januski.

Green Jewels of June

Ruby-throated Hummingbird on Monarda. Sumi Brush Pen and Watercolor Sketch by Ken Januski.

Ebony Jewelwing on Leaf. Sumi Brush Pen and Watercolor Sketch by Ken Januski.

June brings two green jewels to Philadelphia each year, the Ruby-throated Hummingbird, whose back always has some green on it, and the Ebony Jewelwing damselfly, where the male is a brilliant blue/green, though his wings are black(ebony) as could be.

As I've continued to experiment with the Kuretake Sumi Brush Pen, so much so in fact that the first ink cartridge is drying up, I've decided to try it with both of these green jewels as subject. Above both are done first with the brush pen. Then I added a bit of watercolor for color. Since the ink is water-soluble it runs a bit. Given my style that does no harm. But I am investigating how to use permanent ink in the pen.

Ebony Jewelwing and Ruby-throated Hummingbird. Sumi Brush Pen Field Sketch by Ken Januski.

I've always planned to use the pen primarily for field sketching. Finally today I did do with the 20-30 Ebony Jewelwings, the most I've ever seen at one time, at Morris Arboretum. This was a matter of looking through binoculars, trying to remember what I saw, then putting it down, at a very small scale in my sketchbook. Not great but at least recognizable. That's a good base to build from. When I got home I saw the first Ruby-throated Hummingbird in our yard for today. They or it has been here for 4 days straight, feeding primarily on trumpet honeysuckle. The sketch is done from memory later. At this time of year I rarely have drawing utensils with me when they appear so I stare until they leave, trying to memorize the bird and it's movements.

Ruby-throated Hummingbirds. Sumi Brush Pen Sketches by Ken Januski.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird. Sumi Brush Pen and Watercolor Sketch by Ken Januski.

Above are two more sumi brush pen sketches of hummingbirds from photos. In the bottom one I've added watercolor. It may seem hard to believe but one of my purposes in trying the pen was to find a way to sketch my subjects with lines of varying width. This works well in sumi and I'd also like to use the varying line width in my prints as so many have done before me. I haven't really done that much yet in my prints but I hope the sumi sketches will help in that transition.

Below is a woodcut of a Ruby-throated Hummingbird seen in our yard last year and a linocut of an Ebony Jewelwing and Louisiana Waterthrush from 2011. I'm sure more prints will eventually appear.

Ruby-throated Hummingbird on Yew Twig. Woodcut by Ken Januski.

Louisiana Waterthrush and Ebony Jewelwing.Linocut by Ken Januski.