Turkeys, Watercolor, Winslow Homer

Over the last week I've been looking at the work of my favorite watercolor artist, Winslow Homer, in the book 'The Watercolors of Winslow Homer' by Miles Unger. Each time I do I'm reminded of just how good watercolors can be. Looking at the book, laid out in more or less chronological order, it's easy to see Homer's growth away from his drafting skills. Homer was a very accomplished draftsman and this is most obvious in his early work. Drawn shapes remain an armature on which to hang his paintings in his later work but they really are just that: an armature, with which great liberties can be taken. The introduction to the book mentions how watercolor can excel, especially in Homer's work, in capturing light and atmosphere. These are almost always present in Homer's watercolors. The introduction also mentions that Homer never shies away from letting the mistakes or other evidence of the work of finishing the work remain visible. I think it is the combination of light, atmosphere, and fearlessness about showing artistic process that make him so appealing to me.

While working on two pastel drawings recently I found it refreshing to be able to be more carefree with them than I can be with the less familiar, and forgiving, medium of watercolor. But I had some misgivings about the health effects of breathing the fixatif needed to fix the pastel powder to the page. My online investigations only made me more concerned. So I decided to stop them for awhile and go back to watercolor. In preparation for that I took another look at the Homer book mentioned above. One thing that struck me was the rich, luminous but inexact washes that Homer would often use for part of the background. I thought I might be able to use this in my next watercolor.

I and my wife have seen Wild Turkeys in three places in Philadelphia over the last 15 years or so: Tinicum, the Schuylkill Center, and Northwestern Ave. near Morris Arboretum. We spent three hours of a beautiful day with weather in the high 70s at Morris Arboretum today. We saw no turkeys, but did see a total of 28 birds, including a Solitary Sandpiper, Green Heron, Great Blue Heron, Great Egret, 20 or more Wood Ducks and at least 12 Cedar Waxwings. A Wild Turkey would have fit right in, but it wasn't to be today. We did see one at Tinicum taken Memorial Day weekend, 2008. A photo of it is the basis for the accompanying watercolor.

Though I had taken a number of photos of the turkey I've been holding off on trying to do a painting due to the iridescence of the wings. How was I ever going to get any sense of that? It wasn't of paramount importance but I also thought it couldn't be ignored. But watercolor, as evidenced in Winslow Homer, can create very rich coloristic effects. I'm not sure if the iridescence comes through in this photo but I think that it does in the original. I'm happy with it.

Watercolor is a medium that can turn from brilliant luminosity to MUD in a matter of seconds. I think it is a medium that is best used with a solid draftsmanlike armature underneath. But for me it is a crime to be ruled by the armature. It is there as a lifeboat, not as a prison. I think that this is how Homer used it. For myself I think that there's a great danger of MUD if I don't also have my own fairly detailed drawing to start. That anchor, which I know is always there, allows me the freedom to let the paint speak for itself. My artistic background tends strongly in this direction. But it is greatly helped by the example of Winslow Homer.

One last thing that I think draws me so much to Winslow Homer: his love of nature. I don't think he was probably a bird lover though. The few paintings I've seen that include birds aren't among my favorites. But birds can be intimidating. It's easy to feel that every feather should be rendered. Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but it looks to me like Homer was a bit timid with birds and doesn't use the brash abstraction that he does with other parts of nature. He's somewhere in between his usual brash abstraction and a need to portray all the details of the bird.

Acadian Flycatcher in Pastel - Surprise Shapes

I think that this drawing is done. I've let it sit for a week while I looked at it. I made some minor changes, the main one being the addition of darker gray/browns to the upper part of the drawing so that it wouldn't be misread as sky.

As I've looked at it I realized that it isn't as much about color as I'd thought. Like most of my work, abstract or realistic, shape is very important. I'm not sure why I didn't realize that about this drawing. Now that it's done I see how much the tree limbs stand out. Perhaps because they are fairly realistic, and not based too much on my imagination, I just didn't think about them playing an important part in the 'art' of the drawing that I mentioned in an earlier post. But they do.

MY Artistic Convention(s)

As I've looked at my other work over the last week I realize that most of it involves a love of drawing, especially drawing in the sense of carving an object out of the flat dimension of paper or canvas. Sometimes those shapes are realistic, and strive to capture the contours of what I see. At other times they are abstract and more concerned with carving a new object from nothing. In both cases they generally show some of the process involved.

Showing the process involved in a work of art is a 20th century art convention. In the eyes of some most conventions eventually seem to be cliches. The most noticeable example of this I think is the gratuitous painterly drip. Nonetheless it is MY convention. I don't feel right hiding all aspects of the act of illusion creation that is the basis of most representational art. So if someone might wonder why I might not do smoother, more finished drawings, especially as I create the shapes, this is why. I just don't like too much smoothness and the hiding of the process of creating the illusion. For me there is some work involved in getting shapes right. I like to let some of that work show. I realize this is a convention. It does not in itself create better art. But it's my convention.

Acadian Flycatcher in Pastel - No Details

I enjoyed switching from watercolor to pastel in my last drawing and decided to try it again today. Much more than watercolor it is an additive process, i.e. I can start out without a clear plan of what I'm going to do, knowing that I can improvise as I go along. I don't need to worry as much about using up something, e.g. the white of the paper, and then needing to get it back later. Though it's possible to use the clear white of the paper thoughtlessly, just as in watercolor, it is easier to get it back to some degree through the use of white pastel. Since pastel is itself opaque, the addition of another layer of opaque white is not as noticeable as it is in watercolor. Or better, it doesn't seem as bothersome.

This drawing is based on photos of an Acadian Flycatcher taken in Shenandoah National Park in May, 2008. The bird is even more distant than were the Wood Ducks in my last drawing and posting. Because of that I knew that any work based on it was going to have to devote a lot of space to the surrounding forest, with very little devoted to the flycatcher itself.

I didn't do much in the way of a preliminary drawing. If I had done so it would have focused on the tree limbs and foliage and not on the flycatcher, since he is so small. At the same time I had to do something with him so that he was the focus of the painting. This might have been somewhat easier in watercolor and pen/pencil since I could use the line of the pen or pencil to add some small detail. But detail with the broad edge of a pastel is not so easy. Basically pastel doesn't allow detail.

So my idea here was to start laying in color, knowing that there would probably be numerous changes as I tried to unify the drawing coloristically, remain true to some extent to the sense of the deep forest that is often the home of the Acadian Flycatcher, and make sure that he still stood out from the surrounding jungle of limbs and leaves.

The drawing so far has some sense of the deep forest, but the Flycatcher is a bit lost. And the upper part of the drawing reads like it might be sky when in fact it is just a deeper part of the forest. I may need to change the colors to remedy that. Still I think I've kept some of the sense of the way in which he sat and tilted his head. The colors may also have gotten a bit too monotonous, though that in fact is what they actually were. It's time to leave it be for now and come back another day.

So What Is this 'Art'?

In my last post I mentioned rescuing a drawing/painting that didn't include significant, realistic detail with 'art.' This was said half facetiously and half seriously. It could sound like I was saying that a work without significant detail was somehow lacking and needed 'art' to make it as presentable as a more detailed work. Many people think this, and I wouldn't be surprised if most people who like 'wildlife art' think in this way.

That was the partially facetious part of what I said. I think it's more important to think of realistic detail and 'art' as different, though not mutually exclusive, goals in art. Though there is some satisfaction for me in portraying great detail, as in the Robber Fly drawing in the last post, it is often not as strong as creating something that matches my notion of 'art.'

The three variations on a pastel and charcoal drawing of a wood duck and ducklings in this post are an example of what I'm talkng about. They are based on photos I took at Tinicum(John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge in Philadelphia) on Memorial Day weekend, 2008. In most the ducks were a fair distance away. When I began this work it would have been difficult, but not impossible, to show much detail because the photos didn't. If I had a more developed visual memory of wood ducks in particular or just birds in general I might have been able to do so but I don't. So why bother to use them as subjects? Because it was a striking and memorable scene and something that I wanted to express on paper. AND it seemed to present an opportunity to create something 'artful.'



So 'art' is something 'artful'? Perfectly clear. Well I suppose not. Let me just say that I thought that I could do something with this subject that would end up both giving some sense of what the scene was like as I saw it and allowing me to use color, gesture and shape in such a way that I was pleased with the overall visual impression.

It began as a strictly charcoal drawing. It is possible to use tonal variety in black and white drawings to create something just as colorful as a work in color. But I didn't feel that was happening so I decided to add pastel on top of the black charcoal. This was my first use of pastel in a realistic work in many, many years. As the work developed, and reading from top to bottom here, I added some color here, removed some there, erased more here, etc. The intent was both to create something whose colors worked together to create something vibrant and to remain true, at least to a large extent, to what I had originally seen. In particular I wanted to preserve the sense of a Wood Duck and ducklings in water.

As I worked on it, it was the rearrangement of color, more than anything that I kept changing. That was the driving force in continuing to work on it. And in this case I think it was the most important aspect of the 'art.' In other drawings it may be shape, or mark, or design, or numerous other things. All of them make up 'art', and for me they are the most important part of drawing and painting. The difference in my nsturalistic art is that I also want to remain true, to some large degree, to what I originally saw.

A Bird in the Hand.............Is Drawn Differently

Following up on my last post on precision in art I realized afterwards that one reason I've been able to do more precise work with insects is that I've caught the insects and then drawn them under a dissecting microscope. The detail I can see is strong AND the insect doesn't move. It is dead.

I don't know any bird artists personally. The ones I've read about sometimes work from study skins in museums, or dead birds that they may have happened upon. In that case the bird is also dead and allows more detailed study, though of course it is no longer alive. Still it does allow a more detached scientific study similar to that of an insect under a microscope. My understanding is that this was Audubon's primary method of work, after he'd shot the bird. It is probably the best way to see some details that can only be seen in brief glimpses in the field.

On the other hand some bird artists whose work I very much admire work primarily from life, i.e. they only draw and paint what they actually see. They don't use photos. This reminds me of the times I used to draw mayflies. Mayflies live only for a day or so. Moreover everytime I used to catch them they would shrivel up into pale husks of their former beautiful selves. Their beauty was evident only when they were alive. You either had to draw them as they flitted about while alive or draw a shrunken corpse that seemed to have little relation to the live mayfly. Without getting too philosophical about this I do think that it is an apt analogy.

More detail can be seen/drawn/painted when a bird or insect is no longer alive and not being such a nuisance moving about at unexpected times. On the other hand the artist always knows the insect or bird might move and he needs to be extra alert to capture what he sees as he sees it. A second later the bird may have moved. I think that this relates to why I prefer works done from life.

The drawing at top is a portion of a larger drawing. It shows a Robber Fly drawn while viewed under a microscope. The watercolor is based on a photo taken of a Warbling Vireo at the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge(Tinicum) in Philadelphia on Memorial Day weekend, 2008. As I mentioned last time I'm always more interested in creating a work of art when using birds as subjects than I am when drawing insects. That may be related to the fact that I can never see them with the same detail that I see insects. On the other hand it may also be that the lack of precision tells me that the drawing/painting lacks something. Maybe I can rescue it with 'art'.

Palm Warblers and Precision in Art

I got back my many bird photos from May trips to Illinois and Shenandoah National Park last week. Included in them were many photos of some very friendly Palm Warblers at Oakdale Nature Preserve in Freeport, IL. Part of their cooperativeness I'm sure is related to the fact that they spend much of their time close to the ground, rather than at the top of very tall oaks like many warblers.

The image above is a small colored pen and ink drawing with watercolor wash. It's based on one of the photos. Though this Palm Warbler was close enough that the photo shows a lot of detail, particularly of feathers, I opted not to include that much detail. The same is also true of the background foliage but I usually don't have much interest in foliage detail.

The warbler itself was another story. There was a temptation to include more detail, assuming that I could also do so successfully. But, at least for me, that would require a finickiness that I thought would kill the overall life of the painting. This is probably due to both my artistic history and actual physical habit. I probably couldn't control the watercolor brush well enough to show all the details in the feathers even if I wanted to. But my artistic background, which says that no one part of the painting is ever as important as the whole painting, probably had a much larger affect.

My insect drawings are far more detailed. But in a way they are more studies, whose secondary intent was art. In my bird art, it is art itself that always takes precedence, with the secondary intent being accurate detail. Perhaps as I continue to do bird art that will change. But I doubt it. More likely art will remain the primary intent, but on a more ambitious scale than many of the small sketches that I've shown here.

Palm Warblers and Unabandoned Paintings

It's been almost two months since my last post. During that time spring migration has largely come and gone. We witnessed it in three states: Illinois, Virginia and here at home in Pennsylvania. But during that great time of the year it always seems far more important to be out as spring and bird migration occur, in the midst of it all, rather than typing away at a computer screen. And of course that's the great irony of nature-related blogs: they may often be used in praise of nature but all the while that they're being created and read is time away from nature. A beautiful photo of a Blackburnian Warbler or piled up clouds on the Blue Ridges of Virginia will never begin to equal actually being out and seeing both the warbler and the clouds.

That said much of that time I use to take photos or make sketches that will later be used for artwork. Over time some of that will appear here and at my primary web site

My last post included a sketch of a Palm Warbler seen while walking along the Wissahickon and trying to figure out what to do for my next painting. Palms are always some of the very earliest warblers of spring migration in the eastern U.S. They're rich golden yellow wash is always a pleasant change from the grays of winter. I wasn't surprised to see them in Philadelphia in early April but I didn't expect to find them in Illinois in early May. I envisioned some of the later warblers that would normally be seen in Philadelphia in early May, not to mention other neo-Tropical migrants like Baltimore Orioles. However my first day birding in Illinois, at the Oakdale Nature Preserve in Freeport, Illinois was a drizzly day in the 40s. In that weather Palm Warblers seemed right. I was just hoping for 70s and Black-Throated Greens!

I took many photos of cooperative Palm Warblers while in Illinois. On one day I wanted to surprise my wife, who was busy with family matters, with a watercolor based on the birds seen that day. So about 4:30 p.m. I went to a photo-processing kiosk at a local drug store and made my first attempt at editing/ordering photos straight off a memory card. Usually I do this at home with my own photo-editing software. The process was a bit clunky but nonetheless I walked out of the store 30 minutes later with a number of photos. They in turn became the source of the small watercolor at top of this post. I finished it before 7 p.m. I imagine there are no awards for speed painting and I wouldn't be interested if there were. Good art is rarely done speedily. But I did have to marvel at the speed of the entire process!

I now have three or four very quick watercolors of Palm Warblers. Soon I'll take a little more time to do a more developed one

Red-headed Woodpecker, Yellow-throated Vireo, White Pelicans and Sandhill Cranes

Other high birding points of the Illinois trip included a very cooperative Red-headed Woodpecker and a Yellow-throated Vireo that stayed about 6 feet off the ground on bare branches rather than 30 feet off the ground buried in vegetation. I saw both of these at Lake Le-Aqua-Na State Park. We don't often see either of these birds so it was great to see both within 25 feet of one another.

One other interesting birding sight: a flock of White Pelicans flying down the Rock River near Castle Rock State Park. Some birds, for example Sandhill Cranes, Great Blue Herons, and White Pelicans, always stop me in my tracks when I see them in flight. There is always something both primordial and magisterial in the image they present.

Speaking of interesting birding sights I also can't forget the 8-10 Sandhill Cranes seen at Chain O' Lakes State Park or the four that landed in front of us as we approached Monroe, Wisconsin. I'd forgotten that we'd seen any notable birds in our brief time in Wisconsin, but the sight of them appearing out of the sky in front of us and landing in the mud of a local farm was enough to make me slam on the brakes and pull off to the side of the road to take a look. I don't think we've ever gotten such a close look at them.

The Unabandoned Painting

The last post included a pen and ink drawing that was to be the basis of the "abandoned painting," the one I couldn't decide what to do with. In mid-April I finished it. The image above is a small version of it. A larger image is at my main web site. I'm happy with it.

I wasn't really sure what to do with this painting. There was a temptation to do a flattened painting where one or more Canada Warblers would be pinned to the flat space of a painting by the various verticals of the stems of the shrubs in which they sat. That would have worked but that type of painting can give precedence to design over subject matter. I've done plenty of that but I didn't want to to it here. I also didn't want to do a vignette, so common in bird paintings. The end result is this multiple vignette. I'm not sure why I chose this but it was an interesting experiment.

That catches me up somewhat on older birding and art activities. I hope the next post will include some new art.

Lone Palm Warbler

I spent three hours walking along the Wissahickon on Thursday. I had no intention of doing this. I was supposed to be inside working on a new painting. But sometimes it seems as if I'm forcing a new painting when I'm really not sure what I want to do. In that case it's often better to just drop it and go for a walk. Given that spring migrants are starting to arrive it wasn't hard to convince myself to do so.

It started off sunny but became overcast almost instantly and stayed that way. Unlike a week ago, where the woods was filled with the sounds and sights of birds, it couldn't have been quieter. When I finally got down to the water I found some small birds high in the hemlocks and sycamores. Unfortunately they had all their color washed out by the overcast sky. Among the birds I did find were: one Brown Creeper, one Golden-Crowned Kinglet, one American Goldfinch and some unidentified warblers. The gray sky, and lack of calls, left me no choice but to leave them unidentified.

From there I walked about a mile along the Wissahickon before doubling back on the other side of the water. Typical birds like Cardinals, Downy Woodpeckers, White-Breasted Nuthatches, et al., eventually totaled another 10 species.

When I got back to where I'd first seen the unidentified warblers one lone Palm Warbler, my first for 2008, made an appearance. He was still high in the sycamores and hemlocks, but his rich burnt siena color shone through the gray, and his constantly twitching tale, confirmed his identity. While moving closer to get a better view of him I flushed a Hermit Thrush out of some rhododendrons for the second time in the past couple of weeks. I've noticed that the Hermit Thrush doesn't have a twitching tail so much as one that seems to be operated like a hydraulic lift. It seems to land, slowly raise its tail up horizontally and then slowly lower it back down, as though it's being controlled hydraulically. One of the reasons that birding remains so rewarding is that there's always something new like this to notice.

The drawing at top is a small pen and watercolor sketch of a palm warbler based on a photo I took about this time two years ago at the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge. The one big difference is that bright sunshine accentuated the rich golden and burnt siena colors of the Palm Warbler. Though they're not all that uncommon they remain one of my favorite warblers, I think because of both their early appearance and their striking colors.

The Abandoned Painting

Though it was nice to be out I still had an abandoned painting to deal with when I got back home. Finally I decided to try some pen and ink sketches from some photos of a very cooperative Blackburnian Warbler that landed a few feet in front of my wife and myself last May. Working in pen and ink is a bit unforgiving. Unlike pencil or charcoal you can't erase your mistakes. This either gives an unbearably stiff quality to them, primarily from people who know all too well that you can't erase any marks that you put down, or alternatively can give them both greater sureness of touch and greater vitality. For some reason that seemed the best way to work my way towards a new painting. I guess it's sort of like thinking out loud, though in this case it's drawing out loud.

In doing 'bird' or 'wildlife' art my intent is both to be true to the subject matter and to make a work of art. As many people will tell you once you start talking about making 'art' you've made the task more complicated, not necessarily better just more complicated. I'm not going to go into great depth about this except to say that it can give some self-consciousness to the process that can be stifling. In my case for just this one new painting that included questions like: if I do a watercolor based on one the my recent photos of birds will they be too subject to the cropping/framing that often takes place in photos; do I really want to flatten out the space the way that some framing can do; do my photos have enough detail that I can adequately represent all parts of the bird; if some parts are in shadow do I know enough about the structure of birds to construct it from my imagination; am I making the painting too limited by sticking to what is in the photo; can I improvise elements that aren't in the photo; do i just want to do a vignette of a bird where it floats in empty space.

Well obviously this is enough to put anyone to sleep, including the artist! For whatever reason I finally decided to start a new large watercolor based on photos of the same Canada Warbler in more or less the same position taken over a 1-2 minute period. This is something of a multi-vignette and I have no idea how I'll tie all the separate subjects together. I've never tried anything like this before.

This is the initial pen and ink sketch. Tomorrow I start adding watercolor.

First warbler of 2008!

I heard at least one of them as soon as I stepped off of the sidewalk along the Walnut Lane Golf Course and into the woods of the Wissahickon. The problem was that I hadn't heard these trills in 9 months or so. Was it a Pine Warbler or a Chipping Sparrow? The nearby White Pines suggested Pine Warbler but the golf course also has a number of Chipping Sparrows around April each year. As I walked along the trail down to Forbidden Drive I heard the call again. I was about to give up on finding it and just continue down to the Wissahickon at Forbidden Drive, where migrants are often more plentiful. But then there was a particularly insistent call. So I stayed. And finally was rewarded with a view of my first warbler of 2008, a pine warbler!

I think most birders who live in areas where there are four seasons will tell you how exciting it is to see the first warbler of the year. There are of course many other migrants which tell their own story about the seasons. But the warblers are among the first of the neotropical migrants, many of which stick around for less than a month before heading further north to breed. They indicate both the beginning of spring and the beginning of another all too short season of spring migration. But like the Bloodroots which are just starting to bloom in our small woodland garden, they are somewhat ephemeral. You need to enjoy them while they're here because they won't be here for long

I also saw an Eastern Phoebe, in more or less the same spot where I saw my first one of 2008 a few days ago. Other birds include 10+ Common Grackles, 13 Canada Geese, far more than I normally see in this area of the Wissahickon, Reb-bellied Woodpeckers, many Robins, White-Breasted Nuthatches, Mourning Doves, Cardinals, Juncos, Carolina Chickadees, Song Sparrows and American Crows among others.

Why I Love Sketching From Life

I did this small drawing of Canada Geese in the Wissahickon while on this walk. It was drawn in 30-60 seconds and I added a bit of watercolor when I got back home. It's nothing exceptional, to say the least, but it does remind me of the excitement of working from life. There is something about sketches that often seem to capture the dynamism of life. Though the best art is often considered to be that which is most developed I often find myself admiring the sketches of some artists more than their finished work. Rembrandt springs instantly to mind. I also have great admiration for the sketches of Richard Diebenkorn and Elmer Bischoff though I also love their paintings. Perhaps because their paintings also have much of the spontaneity of their drawings there doesn't seem to be such a dichotomy. This also reminds me of how much I enjoy looking at the sketches in 'Drawing Birds' by John Busby and how much more fulfilling I find them than much more finished and polished 'wildlife art.' They capture both the vitalty of the subject and something of the airy quality of being outdoors. Perhaps in another time, where I spent more time outside I would find this less valuable. But today there is something especially appealing and rewarding about art that exudes both vitality and a sense of the light and atmosphere of the outdoors.

Turning Hermit Thrush into Fox Sparrow

I took a short walk at the Wissahickon today hoping to see some migrants. Last Saturday my wife and I had seen our first Hermit Thrush of the spring, his head popping out of some rhododendrons, before he headed to his more usual location on the ground or on bare branches close to the ground. In the same area we had also seen a winter wren and what most likely were 1-2 Black-Capped Chickadees. Though Carolina Chickadees are far more common here I don't have much doubt that at least one of these was a Black-Capped.

Today at the same location I found none of these birds remaining. There were a number of Carolina Chickadees but no Black-Cappeds. Then I saw what must be a Hermit Thrush. It was facing away from me but I noticed some strong dark streaking along his flanks. But that didn't seem consistent with a Hermit Thrush. My next thought was a Wood Thrush but this seemed impossible. It was a month too early for Wood Thrushes. Finally I noticed how really thick the streaking was and also the gray on the head. It was a Fox Sparrow, the first of 2008! I assume if I'd looked long enough I would have seen a non-thrush like bill.

A bit later I came upon my first Eastern Phoebe of 2008. My wife had thought she'd seen one near same location this weekend but it had flown off before we could confirm it.

Outside of the expected birds, e.g. Titmice and White-Breasted Nuthatches, the only other surprise was a large high-flying bird. This turned out to be a Great Blue Heron. He seemed to be heading North along the Wissahickon. Normally we see them in the water if we see them at all at the Wissahickon so it was a surprise to see him so high. But they present a different picture when in flight high in the air than they do on the ground. Unfortunately I wasn't quick enough to pick up my sketch pad and try to get the elegant shape down on paper. Maybe next time.