art, birds, nature

MRAC and SuperKIDS

2012-02-02T12:26:00.001-05:00

This Saturday begins 'Art for Kids Sake' a fundraiser at MRAC (Manayunk Roxborough Art Center) for SuperKIDS. SuperKIDS was established in 1996 to aid abused and neglected children through opportunities and experiences that build self esteem, develop life long interests, and enhance strengths and talents. It will include works from the members of the Manayunk Roxborough Art Center, including my own.

The opening reception runs from noon until 5 p.m. At 3 p.m. some writers from the Schuylkill Valley Writers at MRAC will present "WRITING AS A REFUGE AND HEALING"
as an additional part of the fundraiser.

I'll be showing a number of works as part of the exhibit, which runs through February. At top is the newly matted and framed 'First Wood Ducks of Spring at Valley Green - Wissahickon' from early last spring. I'm also including two other watercolors and numerous prints, though only one, 'Louisiana Waterthrush with Ebony Jewelwing at the Wissahickon', is framed.

And finally I'll be including 'Little Blue Herons at Morris Arboretum'. This is the framed, finished version. Hope to see you there.

Ending January - Month of Herons

2012-01-31T17:44:00.000-05:00

Often the blahs of winter seem to nudge me towards colorful neo-tropical migrants in my art. I remember beginning 2011 with a quick watercolor of an Indigo Bunting. The grays, white and mud browns of winter seem to call out for brighter, warmer colors.

But as this January ends I think it has to be called 'The Month of Herons.' Between the new painting of the two immature Little Blue Herons at Morris Arboretum, the juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron seen at the Manayunk Canal last week and then the comparison of it with the juvenile Yellow-crowned Night Heron seen at the same place in the summer of 2010 it has been a month of herons.

There have also been a number of sparrows, particularly the dead Song Sparrow killed by a backyard cat. But mainly it has been herons.

So as the month ends it makes sense to show the latest version of the immature Little Blue Herons. It has definitely gotten more realistic. I don't think I've ever painted tree bark before, or even had the desire to. And even though this painting started out in an abstract vein something has pulled me toward realism. So for me it is a surprising painting. But part of the enjoyment of art is being surprised.

I think this is about done. If so I'll include it in a show that opens next Saturday and which I'll mention in next post.

Little Blue Herons Continued

2012-01-29T11:57:00.001-05:00

Once I went to the larger canvas that I'm using on most recent acrylic I needed to reconfigure my studio. The only place to paint such a large canvas was on a full size easel facing my windows. That meant that all the light was behind the painting and very little in front of it. I was sort of painting in the dark.

Finally yesterday I pulled out some old floodlights that I used to use when photographing artwork for slides. What I saw was a completely new painting. What was previously subtle now looked brash and unfinished. So today I reconfigured the studio once again so that I could both get better natural light and use the floods if I wanted.

I'd already been tending toward realism as the painting developed. Whether it was the better light or something else I've continued in that direction. I've changed the color of the water to closer to what it really was: swampy green rather than deep ultramarine blue. I also changed the light on the foreground tree on which the closest herons sits. Those were the more obvious changes but there were others.

Now that I can see better I know that I'll need to do more. I hope that eventually it will resolve into a unified painting that I'm pleased with. As I continue with acrylic I don't think I'll continue with these blow by blow accounts. But since I started that process with this one it seemed wise to continue. If I finish this by the end of the week it will go into a show on Saturday.

It's a bit harder to get a good photo on this easel so please excuse the off-center quality of the photo.

Going Out on a Limb, Like a Heron

2012-01-26T12:33:00.001-05:00

I'm not an expert birder. 'Expert' of course is a relative term. But I've had the experience of knowing some expert birders, either personally or in print or online, so I have some idea what a real expert is.

With that in mind it seems foolish to write this post comparing juvenile Black-crowned and Yellow-crowned Night Herons. It's doubly foolish because the drawing at top is based on two photos I've taken of juvenile night herons over the last 2 years. I'm convinced that the photos show a juvenile Yellow-crowned Night Heron from over 18 months ago and a juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron from just the other day. But I could be wrong. Both were seen at the same spot along the Manayunk Canal in Philadelphia.

What I'm trying to do in the sketch above is to do a bit of a field guide ID workshop on differentiating the two birds. This is what's foolish. I'm not an expert and I could be wrong. But in this case I think I'm right and I thought the sketches might be helpful.

The first thing that struck me is the bill of the two birds. Though they can both look blunt in certain views in profile the Black-crowned, which is the bird at the right, is more pointed. I think this is due primarily to the fact that the tip of the lower bill in the Yellow-crowned starts off at one angle then turns to another. This gives a blunt impression rather than a sharp one. This is one of the things obvious in the photos of the two birds and I tried to show it here. These differences are consistent with Sibley's guide.

Another difference mentioned in guides is the extensive yellow on the bill of the Black-crowned. Unfortunately my photos don't really show the lower bill colors clearly. The upper bill is almost completely blue. The lower bill does seem lighter though, perhaps a muddy yellow-green, whereas the photos of what I decided last year was a juvenile Yellow-crowned show a wholly dark blue or blue/gray bill, with the lower bill being darker than the upper. I didn't try to accentuate this in the drawing above.

One thing that I think is critical in bird identification is to first determine what you see, then try to match it to an ID. So for me I have no use for digital guides taken afield. I think people are better off looking at the bird and really studying it. Sketching helps in the looking. In any case that's what I'm trying to to here: look at the most noticeable differences in the birds and then see how they compare to what the guides say. With the bills both the photos and my sketches match the guides in determining the bird on left to be a Yellow-crowned and the rightmost bird a Black-crowned.

One other obvious difference in drawing the birds while looking at the photos is that the streaking on throat and chest is much finer and more distinct on the leftmost bird. I'm not sure I've gotten that across as well as I could have in the drawings. The rightmost bird has more muted, blended streaking. This was very evident in the field. This also in consistent with the IDs of Yellow-crowned on left and Black-crowned on right. It was using all these clues both last summer with the Yellow-crowned and this week with the Black-crowned that convinced me of their identifications. And the guides agree.

Another striking difference but one that I didn't accentuate here because I wanted to focus on the head area is the extensive white markings on the wing converts. They are much larger and more striking on the Black-crowned. I tried to show this in yesterday's watercolor but wasn't as successful as I could have been.

Other clues that confirm the ID: the legs are longer on the Yellow-crowned. I didn't show this in the drawing but it is clear in the photos. Finally something I wished I'd noticed as I finally flushed this week's heron: the feet of the Yellow-crowned are much more visible behind the tail than those of the Black-crowned.

In conclusion I'm going out on a limb here by trying to explain how I differentiated one juvenile night heron from the other and saying why I believe my IDs are correct. And I have to add I feel a little safer doing this in that no one from the PA Rare Bird List has disagreed with either ID. But I'm not at all an expert. I did the above sketch partially for my own education. But I thought others who have trouble with IDing juvenile night herons might also enjoy it.

Oh yes, for anyone interested in the medium: this is in ballpoint pen.

Black-crowned Night Heron Watercolor and Field Sketch

2012-01-25T13:41:00.000-05:00

I always like to take the opportunity of portraying any unusual bird sighting in paint. So after seeing the immature Black-crowned Night Heron at the Manayunk Canal yesterday I wanted to hold off on posting photos until I'd also been able to do a watercolor. But the number of hits on my site last evening convinced me to just go ahead and post the photos in the previous post. Everyone who has responded to it has agreed it's a juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron, a really surprising bird for this time of year.

I rarely go birding without my sketchbook anymore. It was only by happenstance that I had my camera yesterday. In any case after a couple of quick photos I wanted to do some sketching. Unfortunately the heron faced me straight on and there was a great deal of foreshortening problems in my rendering of his bill in the field sketch above. At least I captured the pose though I think. We also saw a bird that I flushed. When s/he finally landed across the Schuylkill River it was just a speck. But I wanted to sketch it anyway, especially the blond blush at back of head. When I got home I finally concluded it was a female Hooded Merganser, not a surprise there at this time of year. It is at the bottom right of the heron field sketch.

At top is a quick watercolor based primarily on the photos I took. I'm a little disappointed in the wings, particularly the wing coverts and their white markings typical of a juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron. But it is successful in some ways and I hope will later be the impetus for a more developed painting.

For anyone looking for documentary photos rather than sketch and watercolor they are in the post below.

January Night Heron in Philadelphia

2012-01-24T22:46:00.000-05:00

I knew that I shouldn't expect a night heron in January. But there's this perverse notion that always takes hold of me that because I once saw a bird in a certain location another of the species should be there every other time I visit. At least there should be a possibility.

Never mind that it's the wrong season, that the one time I saw it might have been a fluke etc., etc. But I was recently reading 'The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable' by Nassim Nicolas Taleb, and he mentioned a study about how people's guesses regarding numbers or probabilities were influenced by the most recent number they'd seen. This is completely irrational and yet it happens. The mind works in very mysterious ways.

Nonetheless I didn't expect to see an immature night heron along the Manayunk Canal today. Three Great Blue Herons was more than I expected. A Hairy Woodpecker was a nice surprise. And yet there it was.

I'd been greatly surprised to find a juvenile Yellow-crowned Night Heron in almost the exact same location in late June/early July of 2010. So I assumed that's what this was. But I can't differentiate juvenile night herons on sight. I did a sketch, took numerous photos, and then when I got home looked at Sibley, Crossley, et al. The combination of fairly long pointed beak, more or less of one color and fairly large white spots on coverts lead me to the conclusion that it's a juvenile Black-crowned.

As has happened before I'm using this blog for documentation purposes for the Pennsylvania Rare Bird listserv. I'd hope to wait until tomorrow to post these photos, along with the sketch and a new watercolor or two. But I see that the blog has had an unusually high number of visitors tonight and I assume its peoplevlooking for photos that aren't yet there. So I'm putting them up now. Tomorrow I'll work on a watercolor and most likely post it and the sketch.

Slouching Toward Realism

2012-01-22T12:27:00.000-05:00

Well maybe. When I started this painting I thought I'd head in a more abstract direction. And I did for awhile. But today I took a step in the opposite direction. I had left different color planes in the water so that there was a largely abstract subdivision of space. I llked this and I think it may be why I thought of Matisse's 'Bathers by a River' when I started.

But I also knew it wasn't realistic. It bothered me a bit. Today after adding more details to the head of each heron as well as to the painted turtle I decided to try to unify the water. Maybe the realistic direction of the detail on herons and turtle was contagious. In any csse for the time being we're headed in a more realistic direction.

As I said earlier my old abstract paintings always meandered like this before finally settling down. It's always been the way I've worked, though media like watercolor and linocut allow only so much meandering and change of direction. In the first you eventually end up with mud; in the latter you've cut away all the lino and have little left except the bare white of the printed paper. Oil and acrylic though lend to nearly infinite variation. That is both good and bad. One thing I am reminded of is that on a large canvas it gets expensive! Paint, and more paint, and more paint....

I'm not thrilled with the expense. But I am thrilled by working in this manner again. When I first started this blog I often wrote that I felt my work was no longer very ambitious. I was too busy learning realism and birds to be ambitious. But now I'm more comfortable and I like the excitement of trying to do larger, more ambitious paintings.

They can also entail more mental strain though at times. So it's good to know that warmer weather is slowly winding its way here and field sketching will soon be available again. It's the perfect break from ambitious paintings.

A Few More Song Sparrow Sketches

2012-01-20T17:24:00.001-05:00

It was a nice sunny day today and should have been good for painting. But it seemed wrong to not take advantage of the song sparrow to do some more studies of it. I especially wanted to try to show wing feathers, both coverts and flight feathers. It is always so hard to see them on birds in the field. And, as with this one, their feathers can be truly exquisite. Sparrows surely have some of the most subtly beautiful feathers.

So here are two sketches showing a bit more of the wing. The first is in pencil like yesterday's version. The second is in ballpoint pen.

When I first was enthralled by bird art the certain cause was 'Drawing Birds' by John Busby. It opened my eyes to the possibilities of bird art. Though the most exciting part by far was the work done from life I was also taken by one of John Busby's own watercolors of a dead Yellowhammer. I still think of it when I draw any bird that has met its end. So I guess this is part of a noble tradition, though one I'd prefer to not partake of with any frequency.

The pen I used for the ink drawing is a Zebra 301A, 0.7 mm in size. Though I've enjoyed using pens with ink that runs I've also wanted to try a pen with more permanent ink. So far this one has worked well.

The Problem with Outdoor Cats

2012-01-19T14:28:00.000-05:00

I've always known that feeding outdoor cats and feeding birds was a dangerous combination. I'd just as soon not feed the cats but my wife feels otherwise. One small cat has constantly had his eye on the backyard birds, especially the Song Sparrows. Even the recent addition of a collar and bell did not help the poor Song Sparrow above. The cat got him today as I was working on the Little Blue Heron acrylic.

This is a dilemma that I don't know the answer to. I understand the damage cats do to birds. I also understand that they are meat eaters and that this comes natural to them. My guess is that a bigger yard might help some but that isn't an option.

At least I felt that I should take the opportunity to sketch the dead Song Sparrow.

I had no intention of posting any photos of the acrylic until it looked significantly different. But since I'm posting the Song Sparrow sketch I figured I might as well include the painting too.

Starting a Large Acrylic

2012-01-17T11:57:00.000-05:00

Well 'large' is relative I guess. The above painting is 2'x4'. Compared to my work of the last few years, which rarely get above 18", it's large. Compared to my much older abstracts in oil and acrylic, generally around 6'x8', it's not large at all.

In any case this is the painting after about eight hours work over two days. I think it's evident that there's a battle between realism and abstraction. I keep trying to get the pose of the immature Little Blue Heron scratching itself correct while taking great artistic liberties with the rest of the painting.

Who knows where it will go? If it's anything like my old abstractions it may look nothing like this by the time I'm done. On the other hand my recent forays in naturalism may rein my experimental impulses in a bit. One thing I should note is that Henri Matisse's 'Bathers by a River' keeps floating around in the back of my mind. I haven't seen it in years but I know a vague recollection of it is somehow entangled in this painting.

One last thing. Because this painting is large it's hard to get a good photo of it. This photo is very much out of focus, and also photographed in horrible light. As the painting moves along I'll see if I can get some better photos.

Reconciling Naturalism and Abstraction

2012-01-15T11:52:00.000-05:00

I was an abstract painter for many, many years. But I've only done one primarily abstract work in the last six or seven years. A few days ago I was sorting through some old frames and canvases from my abstract days. I was hoping that I could salvage a few unused frames to use on my recent bird paintings and drawings.

I found one or two. What I didn't expect to find were some primed but unpainted canvases all set to be painted on. Nor did I expect to be taken with some of the old abstract paintings I found.

I put a lot of work into my abstract work. I consider them very accomplished (even if the rest of the world doesn't). Most of those paintings I remember well. But I'd forgotten about some of these smaller works that had been banished to the basement. One of them is at the top of this post. It's an acrylic, about 32x32 inches. Since I can't remember what I originally called it, or if I even named it, I'm temporarily calling it 'Sit Still.' This for the slightly rocking, off-balance quality that it has. It might not be evident in the photo but there is much visible underpainting in this. It comes from changing, changing and changing until I felt that everything, shape, color, balance all fit together. In many of these works there's a balance that, at least to me, always seems about to fall apart.

One of the unpainted canvases I found was an odd 2'x4' shape. I don't like such strong horizontal, or vertical if you turn it on its side, formats. I can't imagine why I made one in such a size. But beggars can't be choosers, don't look a gift horse in the mouth, etc., etc. My recent return to acrylic painting has been limited to canvases not much larger than 18 inches in the largest dimension. I've been happy with them but they seem like studies. I used to paint 6'x8' paintings. So this fairly large found canvas seemed like a good opportunity.

Because it's such a strong format many things wouldn't work on it. Sometimes sketchbooks are sold in this shape and called 'landscape' format. It does lend itself to some panoramic landscape scenes.

I haven't done much work like that, especially work that includes birds. But I did remember one recent ink and watercolor sketch that might work. It is the painting of an immature Little Blue Heron with a Painted Turtle on a log above. It's really not that horizontal but I might be able to improvise on it.

That thought led me to this earlier watercolor of immature Little Blues, itself a composite of numerous sketches and photos.

This morning I did some preliminary sketches combining these two works in various ways, using a very strong horizontal format. They're at top, beneath the abstract painting.

I suppose this might seem very odd compared to the realism of my recent sparrow works. I probably wouldn't have done it if I hadn't run across the abstract acrylic, realized how much I liked it, and then found the blank canvases.

I sometimes wonder if art should not be split so much into abstract and realistic as urban and rural, or perhaps modern and traditional. For most of my life I've preferred the modern and the urban to the traditional and the rural. But never exclusively. Even in the height of my infatuation with Matisse and Picasso I admired people like Chardin and his quiet still lifes. Since I've been working naturalistically I've stayed closer to the traditional, rural, respectful of nature and not willing to take liberties with it. I still don't like the idea of possibly cheapening it by using it as just a frame for abstraction. But I think it may be possible to avoid that. In any case I think I'll be trying it soon on that odd, horizontal canvas Many of my lincouts tend more toward abstraction but never so far as the painting at the top. I'm guessing that this new painting will go even further toward abstraction, but I might be surprised.

Artists and Birds

2012-01-11T11:25:00.000-05:00

I've seen a lot of White-throated Sparrows recently. They're a common winter visitor, though rarely in our own backyard. The ones with a white supercilium are particularly striking.

As I looked through the photos I've taken of them I was struck by the one I used for the 6x8 inch watercolor and gouache above. Why? The sense of sculpture. The way the line of the upperside of the tail worked with the downsweep of the primary feathers and the forward stance of feet to create an amazing sense of balance. To me this seemed particularly sculptural.

That it turn got me thinking about how many aesthetic qualities there are in birds, qualities that I think make them particularly appealing to artists, even if they've never been naturalistic artists. Between the shapes, the balance of complex poses, the textures, the color and their movement there is just a wealth of qualities that almost any artist might find intriguing.

Add to that the appeal of someone who is actually a birder, or maybe someone who is just a conservationist and I think you can see why so many artists have an interest in birds. Many are not bird artists. But I wouldn't be surprised if many of them, in the back of their minds, aren't half-tempted.

Illustrating Counts

2012-01-08T16:09:00.003-05:00

I've been fairly busy over the last 6 weeks either counting or scouting birds for official counts. In early December there was the Christmas Bird Count. Yesterday was the Philadelphia Mid-winter Bird Census. We generally do our part at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education. But this year I was asked to add the section of the Wissahickon where the Red-headed Woodpecker has been for three months.

That meant scouting the Wissahickon to make sure he was still around and scouting SCEE to see what birds seemed to be around there. Of course there's never any guarantee that the birds you see when scouting will also be there when the official count takes place.

All of which means I've slacking off on my art work. I do try to do sketches while I'm out but it's always a bit harder in cold weather. For instance I just didn't feel like trying to sketch the Red-headed Woodpecker when we found him yesterday. A few bad photos were sufficient. And of course there's just the pleasure of seeing this beautiful bird. That always takes first place.

I would have expected that the woodpecker would be the rarest bird I'd see yesterday. And it was. They're just never in Philadelphia, especially in winter. But it wasn't the most surprising bird. That occurred as I tried to ID tiny birds in the top branches of the two trees in the forefront of the ink, watercolor and gouache sketch at top. As I did so one of the people also on the count with us said 'What are those birds?' When I looked high in the sky I found: Snow Geese!

I've never before seen them in Philadelphia. That doesn't mean all that much since I don't spend much time in areas where they might be possible. Still it was a great shock to see four of them flying by. I later learned that someone doing another section of the count not far away had also seen some, this time a flock in the hundreds. Since they are in other areas of the state right now it's not a total shock. But it's one thing to know that they're being seen in the vicinity and quite another to see them yourself for the first time.

They were here and gone in seconds so I never even thought of any artwork based on them. On the other hand I did look at them hard, even for the very short time that they were visible. Today a day later I still have a mental image of them.

That's what I used in the sketch above. All the rest is made up, though I did try to indicate the many twiggy branches at the top of the trees where I was trying to identify some very small birds. This is done in a now familar manner: ink from a Bic ballpoint pen that runs when water touches it, watercolor and white gouache to try to bring some light back into the dark areas that the runny ink creates.

The ink run so quickly that it's almost like trying to paint with quicksilver. Once water touches ink who knows where it will run? For some reason I like working like this. It seems to lead to quick paintings, rough though they may be.

When I was studying art in college 'illustration' was a dirty word in the art department as well as in just about every art publication I looked at. I was somewhat sympathetic to this view. I think one reason for this is that it's not hard to find art that sells based on its cuteness. The art is valued almost entirely for the 'cute' subject and not at all for either the honesty of the artist in portraying it or for his or her artistic skill. It can seem horribly sentimental.

At the same time though, even way back then, there was something that bothered me about this. Regardless of what anyone says about progress in art in the visual arts there will always be a place for representational art, for art that honestly portrays the world around it.

I deliberately used 'illustration' in the title of this post. This is an illustration, even if only in a very rough manner. I'm portraying an event that occurred and that I found memorable. That impetus will always be a valuable part of art I think. I continue to love very many types of abstract art and I think my own work is fairly abstract. But that doesn't need to be in opposition to illustration. They can readily work together.

I also wanted to continue my studies of Song Sparrows. So today I did a few more, based on photos like those in the last post. The top sketches show a young Song Sparrow that had just bathed. The bottom two are mature birds including one from our backyard. This is the same runny ink style. It's hard to explain. I guess you'll either like it or you won't! I do find it very useful in inspiring me toward more developed work. This as usual is done on one of the heavier Stillman & Birn sketchbooks, this time one from the Delta series.

Learning from Sketching

2012-01-05T16:37:00.000-05:00

It seems like every winter I spend a lot of time going through photos I've taken, looking for a subject for the next painting or print, but also seeing something new about a bird that I hadn't noticed before.

I don't advocate using photos in art. I think you learn so much more and get so much more engrossed when you're working from life or from sketches from life. But photos do have their use.

At this time of year I often find myself trying to do detailed sketches from photos. The purpose of the sketch isn't great art; it's to learn how the bird is put together, to just look at it more closely.

Recently I've noticed the difference in sparrow bills, more from photos than life since I don't really see a great variety of sparrows on a normal day. And Song Sparrows always surprise me with the large size of their bills. So I decided to do a number of sketches trying to concentrate on that.

Today's sketch is at top. After I'd done the pencil sketches I decided to try adding watercolor.

Yesterday's study is above. I originally intended to put another sketch on the right. But once I added watercolor to the sparrow on the left I found myself thinking that the only way to make it look halfway decent as a picture, even though a picture wasn't my original intent, was to continue the scene all the way across the page.

These might have looked better left as pencil sketches. But I also want to improve my realistic portrayal of birds in watercolor so it seemed worth trying to add watercolor to them.

Ending 2011 with Hawks and Acrylics

2011-12-31T16:48:00.000-05:00

It would be nice to report that our last birding walk of 2011 turned up some extraordinary birds and I managed great field sketches of them all. Why leave it at that? I actually managed to do my first plein air paintings of them as well.

But that's what would have been nice. We did see 20 species at Morris Arboretum but didn't find anything extraordinary. The most unusual bird was a Brown Creeper, a winter bird that's always fun to see. But he didn't sit still long enough for me to get any sketches.

I did finish up the immature Red-tailed Hawk above though when we got home. It's 6x8 inches and done in acrylics. It's based on a bird that seemed to be at Morris the entire summer of 2010.

I've looked at photos I took of the bird many times and have always thought a beautiful painting was there for the taking, the whites and browns of the bird shimmering against the gray-blue sky. But for some reason I couldn't ever picture myself ever being successful doing it in watercolor. As I've continued to work in acrylic though(this being my fourth acrylic of the last few months, the first in over 25 years), I keep thinking that I can tackle previously forbidding projects in acrylic.

My guess is that the reason for this is that acrylic, or oil, is just so much more forgiving than watercolor. Since I spent many years as an abstract acrylic and oil painter I'm not surprised that it's starting to become comfortable to me.

That is not what got me started on this painting though. That can be attributed to the fact that I realized it was past time for our local accipiters, Sharp-shinned and Cooper's Hawks, to be visiting our feeders trying for our feeder birds. I decided to do some sketches of Coopers Hawks, above, from photos of previous backyard accipiters. My idea was to refamiliarize myself with them so that I could be prepared for possible field sketches. I'm always thrilled to sketch them but rarely satisified with the results. After I did these sketches from photos I added watercolor. Though these are not particularly successful they remind me of why I remain infatuated with watercolor: the sense of light. Oil and acrlyic can create great light effects as well but for true unadulterated celebration of light there's nothing that can beat watercolors, at least in the hands of someone who has managed to master them.

Surprise Art Materials

2011-12-28T17:29:00.000-05:00

After all my years of art it's not often that I find myself with a medium that I'm not used to and didn't really expect to use. But a chance remark at a gallery opening led to a Christmas present of some oil pastels.

I can't remember how long ago it was I last used them but I know it was a VERY long time ago. Nonetheless I'm a bit rusty from the holidays and experimenting with the oil pastels seemed like a good way to ease back into picture making.

There is something about oil pastels that is appealing, for instance their rich colors. But there's something also I don't like: the difficulty of making sharp lines. Once you start using the pastel the shard edges become blunt. Regular pastels have this problem too but I've always found a way around it. So I can still make sharp lines when I want to. i find it harder with oil pastels. Maybe that's why I haven't used them in such a long, long time.

The drawing above is based on a photo of a Belted Kingfisher seen at Morris Arboretum this fall. I often sketch them from life at Morris. But there's always something more to learn, something that I need to learn because the bird flies before I'm able to get it all down. I think if I knew the bird better, for instance the size and shape of the bill or the relation of the flight feathers to the coverts, I might be able to sketch them in after the bird has flown.

I often feel, particularly in winter when it's harder to be outside sketching, that it's worthwhile to sketch from photos and try to get down all of the details that I miss in my field sketches. So that was the start of this: a fairly detailed drawing that I then covered over with the oil pastel.

It's very small, about 6x8 inches I think. I can't say I'm thrilled with it but it is acceptable. You can always learn something by working with new media. Sometimes that's the way you fall into the perfect medium for yourself.

Season's Greetings 2011

2011-12-20T15:59:00.002-05:00

Since I resumed acrylic painting a few months ago I decided to buy some little pre-stretched and primed 6x8 inch canvases. I thought I might use them like sketches and they might force me to keep experimenting with acrylic.

So a thread on the Wildlife Art section of Birdforum today focusing on paintings that illustrated the theme of Season's Greeting and Happy Holidays was just what I needed to try out those canvases.

This is based on a photo of a Dark-eyed Junco that was in our Swiss Stone Pine after a rare October snowstorm. And we've seen no snow since!

Happy Holidays to all.

CBC and Sapsucker

2011-12-18T11:25:00.002-05:00

Yesterday we took part in a Christmas Bird Count, one of very many that began last week and will continue through January 5, 2012.

As the link to the national Audubon site above says it is now over 100 years old and has tens of thousands of participants. I imagine there are various reasons for taking part.

For us, as with the Philadelphia Mid-winter Bird Census, I always realize that much of it is that we just enjoy being outside in cold weather. I suppose if we didn't live in a large city we'd go skiing or snowboarding or something like that. It is more than that of course. It is about birding, the thrill of the hunt, as well as conservation. But in the end I always feel that I've just enjoyed being able to spend most of a winter day outside. Of course this would be far less thrilling without warm clothes!

I didn't expect to sketch or take photos yesterday. I knew it would be too cold to spend much time sketching. And I didn't really expect any rarities. But toward the end of the day this female Yellow-bellied Sapsucker curled itself up like a grub on the slender branch shown above. I assume it was eating but what? I don't think there were any insects on these tiny stems. I really didn't look closely enough to see if there were any tiny berries there. My recollections is that there were either catkins or small leaf buds. After I posted this I mentioned it to my wife. She was paying more attention than I: the bird was eating very small berries.

In any case it was an unusual pose for a sapsucker. It was made all the harder to draw because she was facing away from us. Her tail was in focus and her head was opposite the tail, horribly foreshortened.

But it was a pose too interesting to pass up. So I pulled out my sketchpad from my backpack and did a quick sketch before she flew a second or two later. This is an ink, watercolor and gouache sketched based on that quick field sketch. I missed so much information in the original sketch so reconstructing a correct view of the bird was difficult. So I looked at other sapsucker photos I have, at some downy woodpecker photos in a vaguely similar position that I have and guidebooks. This is pretty close to the original sketch.

There are some details I question in it. Are they correct? Perhaps not. But I'll look more closely next time I see an upside down woodpecker. It does get a sense of the pose and commemorates a moment in a CBC. Just one more of the enjoyable aspects of a Christmas Bird Count. This one by the way was for Wyncote Audubon, our local Audubon chapter.

Cutting Edges of Art

2011-12-16T17:24:00.000-05:00

Many claim to be on the cutting edge of just about everything. An email I received today promoting something as 'cutting edge' got me off on a cliche rant. Just how many years can something be on the cutting edge? When does the cutting edge become the blunted through overuse edge? If everything is on the cutting edge is it better to be elsewhere?

So as a service to all readers I show you two of the true cutting edges of art. These are two of the carving tools I use when cutting linocuts.

My dislike of this cliche is very old. I tend to forget about it until I see someone promoting something as cutting edge as I did today. It makes you wonder if people think when they speak. Do they have any idea what their words mean?

What drives me nuts about this particular cliche is that it uses a hackneyed term to describe something that the user wants to embellish with a sense of newness. Instead it instantly shows that it is old and hackneyed.

It's always dangerous to generalize. Nonetheless I'd say that the majority of artists I've known have a particular nose for truth and falsehood, for honesty versus hype. My guess is that most of them would not describe their work as cutting edge. They may quite honestly be trying to do something new, different, fresh, to breathe new life into old forms and structures, to find a fresher way of expressing something. But I doubt that they ever care about being on the cutting edge. Even if the term were not a cliche I don't think newness for the sake of newness if the goal of many artists, except for the ones maybe who don't pursue art for personal reasons but more for the cache that if offers in society, a cachet that is as often a bad cachet as it is a good one.

Still I'm sure that the cutting edge will always be with us, especially in the arts, as artists push the envelope, over the edge, breaking new boundaries in the wonderful world of cliches.

That said here is my newest linocut made with my cutting edge carving tools. This print was more successful on copier paper using a cheap ink. I mistakenly added a thinner to the ink when I switched to oil-based ink and printmaking paper. Most of the crisp edges are gone and over 20 prints on two types of paper never really got them back. So for now there is this one somewhat indistinct edition. In the coming days I'll try a different ink on good paper to see if I can get a sharper edition.

This is based on the watercolor of House Sparrows in our Winterberry from the last post.

House Sparrows on Winterberry

2011-12-12T10:52:00.000-05:00

Until recently I've had a lot of the local House Sparrows visiting my window feeder,which sits just a few feet away from me as I write this. I've shown a few of the field sketches. Since they're only there for the food though no one is sitting still. They all land on top of each other fighting for a place at the table. In a split second they're gone.

So I've been able to do some sketches of them that I think have a sense of dynamism. But they don't have much detail. I've haven't been able to get a good look at the bill, at the facial coloring, especially on the male, or at the feathers. So recently I took a few photos of them sitting on one of our winterberries on the backyard. There they are a bit more likely to sit but they're not as close. So I need to either draw while using my binoculars or a scope, or take photos. I opted for some photos.

As with many parts of nature the more you look the more beautiful you find it. The same is true of House Sparrows. I don't like them because they've driven off almost all of our other feeder birds. They constitute 90% of our feeder birds each winter any more. But they do have their own beauty and personality.

I've been using my various Stillman & Birn sketchbooks mainly to draw in ink recently. That was the case with the Canada Geese in the last post. The sketchbooks have worked well for that and for all of my work.

In this case though I wanted to use a fine pencil as a guide for a watercolor, one in which the orginal pencil lines probably wouldn't be evident at the end. This work is done on a 6x8 inch Beta series sketchbook. As I flip through the sketchbook I notice that the Lincoln's Sparrow of a week or so ago was also done in the same method in the Beta.

It has worked well for this method as well as for the runny ink and watercolor method that I often used. I used to use another brand of sketchbook for this type of work. It also worked well enough but I was always hesitant to sell any of the works that I liked. The paper didn't seem of high enough quality. I compensated by lowering the price for those works.

But with a stronger paper like this I'm not hesitant. The paper works fine for more finished work. But the purpose of these is still as small, experimental sketches. It's an easy and quick way to try something out and see if it might deserve fuller working in paint or printing ink. I'm still not sure where this one might lead but I am quite tempted to do a more permanent homage to these bullies of the bird feeder.

Canada Geese with Fallen Beech

2011-12-10T17:50:00.003-05:00

With just a bit of daylight left after gallery sitting at the Manayunk Roxborough Art Center I decided to try the quick Bic pen and watercolor sketch above. I continue to like this manner of working. This is based on a photo I took a week or two at Morris Arboretum. I knew that I wasn't going to get much detail on the two geese. But I was really more interested in the entire scene: bright fallen leaves of autumn, huge fallen beech, and two Canada Geese on a sand bar in water that reflected all the colors around it. A sketch like this is just another way of exploring that scene and determining whether or not it deserves further exploration in paint or print.

The MRAC Holiday Show in Philadelphia continues on Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. tomorrow, the following weekend and in January. Above are two of my framed prints that hang in it. These prints as well as prints in mats are available for sale there, as are the works of all the other MRAC artists who are exhibiting. It is located in the rear of 419 Green Lane in Manayunk/Roxborough.

I had one more thing to finish up before starting something new like the quick watercolor at top.

This is the finished version of the small 4x6 osprey linocut. I finally finished adding watercolor to the edition of nine prints. This photo is a bit dark. The actual print is a bit brighter than this. There is much more that can be done with this method of working, as I mentioned in another post. But this served as a good introduction to me. It's very odd coloring in each of the prints, almost like going back to grade school. On the other hand some artists do incredibly sophisticated work with this method. I'm sure I'll try a couple more prints in this method to get a better idea of how it works for me.

Drawing From Memory

2011-12-04T17:59:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we decided to take a brief break and take advantage of the sun and relatively warm weather. But a two hour walk at Morris Arboretum found few birds until we were getting near to closing time.

I thought I saw some movement in some tall grasses. I put my binoculars on it and saw a sparrow like bird with its tail cocked. Soon after it flushed and went to the top of a tall grass. The first thing I noticed was the buffy/ochre malar, one sign of a Lincoln's Sparrow. That got my attention and so I looked very carefully trying to note all the markings.

I was so involved with that that I forgot I was carrying my camera. Soon it flew, and then flew again. Another sparrow like bird flew with it. About 15 minutes later we came across two more very secretive sparrows in the grasses. You could see the stems move as they ate but the birds themselves just wouldn't show themselves.

For me this is always an interesting time. I'd love to say that at least one of the birds was the beautiful Lincoln's Sparrow. But was there enough evidence?

When I got home I looked through 3 or 4 guides trying to come to a conclusion. The buffy malars, fine streaking on breast and gray nape, all of which I carefully noted while looking at bird, indicated possible Lincoln's. But as it flew there was a flash of a light, whitish belly. That seemed more reminiscent of a Savannah Sparrow than a Lincoln's.

This is one of the many instances where as a birder you really can't say for sure what you've seen. And if the bird is mainly in memory without any visual representation it may morph into just about anything over time.

So today I decided to do some sketches from memory. I knew that they would look bad. I just don't know birds well enough that I can do a good job drawing them from memory.

Those sketches are above. In one I wanted to capture the buffy malar. In another I tried to show the fine-streaking and center spot when viewed from the front. Finally a sketch showing the cocked tail.

After that I pulled out some photos I'd taken of a Lincoln's Sparrow at Magee Marsh this spring. I then did the watercolor at top based on it. This was a very quick, 30-60 minute sketch.

As I did it I compared it to my sketches from memory. Boy I have the position of the malar wrong don't I? But I find that this is a good way to learn. Try to draw what I can recall. Then draw or paint from a detailed photo seeing both what was wrong with the memory sketches but also accentuating some areas, like the buffy malar, because of the strong memory of it.

I think the best artists can most likely do recognizable birds from memory. I hope one day that I'll reach that state. But the only way to do it is to keep practicing, knowing all the while that the results along the way maybe almost embarassing.

This type of exercise is also helpful to my abilities as a birder. As I compare what I remembered from memory to what a detailed photo of the presumed species i learn more about that species. At the end of the exercise I'm more convinced than ever that it was a Lincoln's Sparrow. But I'll have to go find it again to prove it!

Matting and Framing

2011-12-01T11:15:00.000-05:00

One thing I never expected when I joined the local Manayunk Roxborough Art Center early this fall was the constant opportunity to exhibit. This is tempered somewhat by a smallish audience but you never know when that might change.

So this Sunday's Holiday Show, with festivities from noon to 3, is one more opportunity to show. I've just finished cutting mats for six prints, building a frame for one paintng, and experimenting with store bought frames for two of the prints.

I've always been an artist who's more interested in the art than in the packaging but that's easier to do when your art stays in the studio. If it's being exhibited somewhere then you need to consider things like mats, frames and of course their cost. I'm surprised that I don't mind this work and the cost hasn't been as bad as I feared.

I guess part of that is that the work just looks better in a mat and/or frame. If it doesn't end up on someone else's wall it might just end up on mine, somewhere outside of the studio. The photo above shows the newly matted and framed work in the studio along with some other work on the walls.

I've only had time to try watercolor on one of the tiny osprey prints. It is below.

I'll probably try another version or two on the two remaining proofs then watercolor the remaining prints in similar colors. This is not my most ambitious work but I still find it somewhat striking.

Late November Buckeye

2011-11-26T16:26:00.000-05:00

We like to take a walk on most holidays. And based on the number of people we see we're not alone. But it's rare that we got the weather we've had this Tbankgiving holiday. Sunny and in the 60s.

Perhaps that explains the Common Buckeye we found at Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education yesterday. These butterflies are in fact common but we don't see them more than once or twice a year. Part of that is because we never go out with the primary intention of finding butterflies. When we do they're always a bonus, just like dragonflies. But both of them add to the pleasure of a day outside.

And if you're able to see them magnified through binoculars you have to just stop in wonder. They certainly give birds a run for their money when it comes to aesthetics. This one in particular is gorgeous.

If I were a photorealistic type of artist I'd try to render every color, every gradation of one color into another. But I just have never had any desire to paint in such a way. So this quick sketch of ink and watercolor tries instead to get a sense of the excitement of being outside, of seeing this beautiful butterfly perched on some oak leaves on the ground.

I've seen a number of artists who've done a wonderful job of portraying butterflies in their environment, definitely not in the photorealistic style. One of the best is the late David Measures. Another is Barry Van Dusen with his own version of a Common Buckeye.
Finally Bruce Pearson seems to do a wonderful job on whatever he sees outside! What i like about all of these is that they capture the excitement of being outside, of seeing nature outside. To me this is far more interesting and artistic than any photorealistic renderings.

I wish I could say that my little sketch at top was done from life like the work of the artists I've just mentioned. I did one field sketch of this Common Buckeye but I also took some photos. This is based more on one of the photos than on the field sketch. But I'm working my way to doing more painting outside. Next year when the predictably warm weather returns I hope to have more to show along those lines.

Tiny Osprey

2011-11-23T16:28:00.000-05:00

A number of factors have conspired to get me to try some very small linocuts. Part of it is a holiday show of smaller works at the Manayunk Roxborough Art Center, part of it is the lower prices I can charge just in time for the holidays, and probably part of it is just the lack of pressure on me when I do something small.

In addition my plan is to hand color each print with a bit of watercolor. I guess the main reason for this is that I'd like the print to look something like the small watercolor and ink version of this I showed a week or two ago. Who knows how this will work. To see a masterly combination of linocut and watercolor look at the work of Andrew Haslen. One of his prints was often shown in media coverage of the Society of Wildlife Artist's 'The Natural Eye' show that I was also in a few weeks ago. It reminded me of how much I like what he does with the combination.

I'm afraid that I won't do anything very similar here though. Most artists seem to use linocuts to create the outlines of forms then use watercolor to fill in, though sometimes with a very sophisticated 'filling in.' But as usual I'm trying something different. There are very few outlines in this print, outside of the osprey itself. And the black ink and white paper will provide most of the fill color there.

That just leaves the grasses, water, and distant grasses. So I'll just add a few colors in indistinct areas. That is similar to the watercolor so that's what I'm going for.

It may not work at all. But that's the virtue of working so small. If it doesn't work I haven't lost much in the way of time or materials. So sometime after Thanksgiving we shall see what happens. And to be on the safe side I may just print a few with no added watercolor.

Finishing Up

2011-11-18T10:32:00.000-05:00

In between my field sketches and watercolor of ospreys, other field sketching, general birding, etc. I've had two somewhat developed works: the ten terns lino, focused on the Black Tern in front, and my second acrylic painting in 25+ years, of the Ruby-crowned Kinglet in Cattails.

I've had the luxury of letting them sit while I work on other things and decide if they're really done. I think that they are. Above is the Ruby-crowned Kinglet, 11x14 inches.

This lino sat the longest. Like sculpture when you cut away on a linocut what you cut away is gone for good. You can't put wood back on a sculpture and you can't put linoleum back on the block. So inadvertently it's sometimes easy to go from a print that seems too dark to one that seems too light. I feared making this one too light, even though it was a very light scene to begin with. Finally I decided that I needed to lighten it up. I did that yesterday. I believe it's now done, though this is the type of thing you could probably fine-tune for weeks.

All of the proofs have been with water-based inks. They are so easy to work with and cleanup, though the ink seems to disappear extremely quickly compared to oil-based inks. I'm still deciding whether to print the edition in oil-based or water-based ink.

George Bush and the Osprey

2011-11-15T16:17:00.002-05:00

I know that the title of this post probably hints at a nasty joke at the expense of George Bush. I'm no fan of his but that's not the reason I titled it so.

I try to stay away from politics here, not that I don't have very strong feelings and thoughts about it. But I don't believe readers read this for politics and so I don't want to do anything to scare them off, well at least most of the time. Occasionally I can't help myself.

The reason I mention George Bush though really does relate to ospreys. I was trying to walk off the depression of his re-election on the day after the election in November, 2004. I was near Kitchen's Lane Bridge over the Wissahickon in Philadelphia. A huge shadow appeared in front of me and I looked up to see an osprey heading up the Wissahickon with a fish in his talons. I believe it was the first osprey I had ever seen there. It certainly was the latest.

I had mentioned this to an accomplished Philadelphia birder about a month ago and he expressed some surprise. It seemed late for ospreys here. That was my thought when I saw it and when I saw subsequent ones along the Wissahickon in October of numerous years since then. Still there was no doubt what I was seeing.

Yesterday Jerene and I went out to see if the immature Red-headed Woodpecker was still there. YES! Five weeks since I'd first found him. Since they bred here in the 19th century I do have to wonder if he might not stay. When I've seen him he's acted as though it's always been his home. As nonchalant as could be.

When we first arrived at Wissahickon near Valley Green we heard some whistles I couldn't quite place. They seemed wrong for the squeaky whistles of Wood Ducks. But we couldn't find the bird. When we returned from our walk down to the woodpecker though a huge shadow went over our heads. A beautiful Osprey. He sat in a snag directly across from the Valley Green Inn for at least five minutes. Then he flew around the nearby bridge for another five minutes before heading down stream.

I didn't decide to sketch him until just before he left. So the field sketch at top is really more from a visual memory of the bird I'd just seen than from actually looking at it and drawing it. The same is true of the bird as he flew downstream. This is definitely the latest I've ever seen an osprey at the Wissahickon.

This type of sketch from memory is often wrong. I've not made his wings as long as they should be. But each time I do this I learn more. Eventually I'll have a pretty good sense of an osprey's shape before I try to draw the one that just landed in front of me, along the Wissahickon at a time he shouldn't be here.

The watercolor at top is another done on Stillman & Birn Beta sketchbook. It has worked just fine for the washes and watercolor that I use. The ink is the same runny ink from a Bic pen that I've mentioned in the past. One of these days I'll have to explore a ballpoint pen whose ink does not run. For now I'm just using it to ease the way from a drawing to a painting. The painting is based on a photo and field sketch of osprey with punky looking head feathers seen in Cape May last August.

Kinglets and Cattails

2011-11-10T10:02:00.001-05:00

One thing I forgot to mention, and it's kept nagging at me, is the emphasis on field work in much of the art of the Society of Wildlife Artists. I'm so used to it now that I forget that I take it for granted. But I just wanted to add that I think that's an essential ingredient to the liveliness of the art, at least wildlife and nature art.

The ink and watercolor sketch above reminded me of this principle. Ever since I saw and sketched the Ruby-crowned Kinglet on some cattails at Morris Arboretum in sketch below last week I've toyed with the idea of making a more finished work from it.

As I've mentioned for probably four years now Kinglets are very hard to draw in the field. They just don't sit still, at all!!! Almost as though they get paid by the flit. So the sketch above is really more from memory than from looking at the bird. I had just seen the bird but it was gone before I could put it down. So this is drawn from a mental image. That in turn is partially formed by all I've learned over the years in sketching Ruby-crowned Kinglets. I have to keep reminding myself that the wingbars start further back than I expect them to, etc., etc. The pose on the cattail was also from memory. Most cattails stand straight so already there's somehing a bit off in the sketch. But it did serve as the impulse to keep thinking about a more finished work with this subject.

Yesterday we spent much of the day at Peace Valley Park in nearby Montgomery County. We only get there about once a year. Yesterday's promise of sunny weather in the high 60s AND a selasphorous hummingbird seen the day before were enough to convince us to give it a visit. The hummingbird had not been seen since the day before and we didn't see it either. There were six Ruddy Ducks and lots of gulls but other than that the only surprise was a late season Gray Catbird.

But there were cattails! There is a lovely pond in front of the bird blind there. We sat for awhile and sketched cattails. Ever since I'd done the sketch of the kinglet and cattail I've regretted that I didn't take some cattail photos for reference. So when we found some right in front of us it seemed the perfect time to make sketches and take a couple of photos.

This morning I tried to put all that together in the ink and watercolor above. This one is done on paper from the Stillman & Birn Beta series of sketchbooks. It's similar to the Delta series in that it's a very heavyweight paper. The difference is that this is natural white rather than ivory. Both have proved very useful for this type of quick sketch that includes a fair amount of water.

As usual I'm finding this method of ink that runs when water touches it and a bit of watercolor on this paper to be a good way to work through ideas for more developed work. I'm still not sure that I can pull off a painting based on this theme. But I'm definitely toying with the idea.

A few hours after posting this I had decided to just make an acrylic from this idea. At top is the result of the first few hours work. I'm sure there's still much more to do. I'm happy to say it's based largely on sketching from life and only minimally on photos I took.

Ten Terns and SWLA(The Other Acronym)

2011-11-03T13:57:00.001-04:00

In any field there are acronyms that often mean a lot to the few people that are interested in that particular subject but often are meaningless or actually sound like pretentious nonsense to others. I used to work in IT and as you can guess there were so many in that field that you could almost construct entire sentences of just acronyms - not that anyone in their right mind would want to.

As I've mentioned on and off over the years of this blog's existence I've struggled to combine my so-called 'fine art' background with wildlife art. I put 'fine art' in quotes because to me there's a false but nonetheless existent dichotomy in the art world between the two. If you doubt this actually occurs in practice ask yourself how many paintings with wildlife as subject you've seen in museums. It is almost unheard of to find contemporary wildlife art shown in museums.

I think this is both silly and harmful. But it's also a complex situation. There's much wildlife art I don't like. It's cute, or formulaic, or slavishly photographic. So I've always felt myself much on the far outskirts of wildlife art. And yet there's no reason at all that it shouldn't be the subject of contemporary, high-quality art. When I started using birds as subject five or six years ago I could find extremely little contemporary art with wildlife as subjects that I liked.

But slowly I found a few people. And then I found a lot. A huge number of them could be found at one place: SWLA. So for me this is an acronym that packs quite a punch. It exemplifies, particularly in the work of many of its members, what wildlife can accomplish and what it should aspire to.

SWLA stands for Society of Wildlife Artists. For years I've looked through the work of its members and admired it. When I can afford to I've bought books of their work. For others I'm waiting, eagerly, for their first books to be published.

It is based in London but accepts international members. There is also an annual competitive show, called as of last year I believe, 'The Natural Eye.' The 48th annual exhibition is on exhibit now in London.

I applied for it a number of months ago. I thought it would be difficult to get into, not to mention difficult to figure out how to ship. Because of the costs of shipping though they allow international artists to apply first with digital images. If they are pre-selected then they need to ship their framed works for the show and go through a final judging.

My work was pre-selected! So I created new mats and frames and figured out how to ship it there, without truly extravagant costs. But I didn't anticipate customs, something I've never really dealt with. To make a long story short the prints were still in customs on the day of final judging. I gave up on being in the show.

Then a few weeks ago I heard from Mall Galleries that the prints had arrived and would be in the show. I couldn't believe it! My prints hanging with some of the artists I most admire. I put a small notice at the top of my blog under 'About Me' that referred to it. But I didn't want to write about it on the blog until I knew for sure that the prints were hanging. A week ago I wrote that I was in two shows in one week, both with acronyms. This is the other one.

So I looked for reviews after the opening last week. The best I've read so far has a number of photos. But it and other reviews all showed the work with light colored mats and light colored frames. Mine had neither. Was there a framing rule I'd missed that required them? Since even pre-selected work could be refused for improper framing I began to doubt that my work was finally in it.

Today it was confirmed that it is and has been hanging at show for last week or so! I think I need to pinch myself in order to truly believe this. I only wish I could see the show myself. The review mentioned above states how high the quality is and also mentions that the printmaking is 'stunning.' I couldn't ask for much more than that, other than to actually see it.

There is one more thing that would even be better: to have gone to the opening and to have met my online friends from the Wildlife Art thread of birdforum that are also in the show. The ones I know of are: Tim Wootton, winner of Birdwatch Artist of the Year award, Nick Derry and Adam Bowley. I don't think any of them were at opening and may not even get to show. But as I said that is the one thing that I could wish for to make being in the show even more exciting. And I've never seen their work, or the work of SWLA members, in person. I'd love to be able to do that, especially with mine hanging somewhere nearby.

****
I had to choose an illustration for this post. I could have chosen two prints that are in show but I've shown them before. One in fact is now the header image for this blog. That's the Blackburnian Warbler. The other print is the black and white linocut of the Louisiana Waterthrush and Ebony Jewelwing.

But since I've nearly finished the newest lino I decided to show it instead. It's at a point now where every little change makes a difference. I think it's done, outside of printing an edition on good paper. But I need to let it sit for a day of two to make sure it's done before printing an edition.

Black Tern Day Two

2011-10-31T17:41:00.000-04:00

The results of day two on this. My guess is that I'll finish tomorrow, then print a small edition. The one thing I like most about printing is that it engages my artistic skills, such as they are, rather than my realistic rendering skills. Since I'm far stronger with the former, at least in my unbiased eyes, there's generally a feeling of coming home to what I should be doing when I'm working on a print.

Black Tern Lino

2011-10-30T18:05:00.001-04:00

It's been a very long time since I did a linoleum block print. The last one was the 9 color reduction print of the Blackburnian Warbler. And that may explain it: it was an exhausting process. Then there is the problems of oil based paints and solvents. I was getting a bit tired of them.

So a few weeks ago I bought a tube of water-based block printing ink. Above is version 10 or so of a new print of a Black Tern amidst Forster's and Common Terns. I did an ink, watercolor and gouache version of it a week or two ago.

What a pleasure it is to clean up with just water. This is a revelation to me. No smell at all, no use of oil and simple cleanup. As with most things though I wonder what the catch is. I do seem to go through more ink with this. And I haven't used good printing paper. These are just proofs on printing paper. But so far I can't complain about the appearance.

It looks like something I'll continue to explore. We saw this lifer Black Tern at Cape May Point State Park last August. I wanted to focus on him. As I've mentioned before it's always a bit of a shock to go to the linear medium of block printing. How do I get various tones? Especially if I'm only use one color as with this? Well it has to be one with marks of one sort or another.

So every print is an experiment. I'm happy with how this has gone so far. You can see that there is a dark area of background that I haven't touched yet. I wanted to keep working on it but prudence told me not to. It's too easy to make serious mistakes when working too long.

So more to come on this. At the moment I have high hopes. It's nice to be printing again.

Winterizing

2011-10-28T17:49:00.000-04:00

I knew that it couldn't be true -- 6 to 10 inches of snow this weekend for Philadelphia. It's still October. We often don't get snow until January! And yet that's the current forecast.

But the House Sparrows at my studio window feeder looked like they might be preparing for snow. The sketch above is based on sparrows at my window. When there are a lot of them feeding frantically I can assure you that they don't sit still for long. Most of the time they're fighting. Just as I start one another sparrow lands on or near him or her and starts fighting. Often I can only get one line down, like the breast in the female at lower left, before the bird is gone. I need to try to remember the rest of the bird. Or, wait until another bird takes a similar pose.

This may seem either silly or masochistic. But it actually is fun. You're forced to really think about how the bird is put together. For instance you may need to put a head on a sparrow, as I did at lower left. Inevitably some things will be wrong. But just as true is the fact that you might capture some sense of life. And you do get more familiar with the birds you're sketching.

For this I'm using a Bic 537R ball point pen. It's extraordinary how much the ink runs when water touches it. Normally this would be a catastrophe. But here I like it. It's a very quick way to change a drawing into a painting, or at least a wash drawing. And you never know what surprises you might get.

Just as the sparrows are winterizing I've been doing the same, along with my wife, around the house and garden. Today just in time for the cold and snow I finished making some new windows for our cold frame. These are metal windows that I picked up off the street years ago thinking that they might come in handy. But they need a wooden frame to work as tops for the cold frame. I spent the last few days using a Stanley handheld multiplane to dado out grooves in some 2x2s to put the window into. They're not perfect but they look like they should keep the cold out. So my many choi seedlings will I hope be able to grow to a usable state. And my poor little basil seedlings, planted very late as you can guess, may survive long enough to give a bit of basil flavor to November and perhaps December meals.

Between this type of winterizing work, preparing frames and mats for the MRAC show, and getting end of warm weather birding in before it's too late I haven't done much in the way of art. When that happens I often feel like I need to do some sort of doodling, sort of thoughtless art, to warm myself and figure out where I want to go.

Recently I've done some of that with the runny ball point pen and a Stillman & Birn Gamma sketchbook. But that sketchbook isn't made for strong washes. So I finally broke down and bought a Delta sketchbook with a much heavier paper. I really wanted to try it out. So that's what you see above: the same Bic pen, watercolor and the Delta paper. This shows the immature Little Blue Heron that I saw at Morris Arboretum this summer along with a Painted Turtle, happily looking in the opposite direction as the heron. I've always tempted to do something with it. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to take that composition out for a spin.

I do really like the ability to test out compositions like this. Eventually it or some of the other recent similar experiments should end up as paintings or prints.

Week of Acronyms

2011-10-26T09:06:00.000-04:00

This is an unusual week for me. For a few days I'll have works in two shows at the same time. And both shows have acronyms. The first is MRAC, the Manayunk Roxborough Art Center. I've mentioned this show earlier. It will end this weekend.

Above are two works both watercolors, a kildeer seen at Morris Arboretum in Philadelphia, and the pond at Freeman Road Tract of the Canaan Valley NWR in West Virginia. We vacationed there just over a year ago.

My friend Gabrielle at The Inner Artist asked if I would show any in situ photos. I'd like to but rules about not taking photos of other works limits me to cropping these photos so that only my own work is shown. Above is another watercolor of some greater yellowlegs seen at Heislerville WMA in New Jersey a year or two ago. It's in a slightly more abstract style.

And finally my newest acrylic painting which I documented extensively here. I'm not thrilled with either the painting or the frame. But both were the first in a long time. I have to give MRAC credit for finding a way to display the oddly sized frame.

As I've mentioned before MRAC is a cooperative gallery only a few blocks from my home. It's over 50 years old and included some very talented local artists among its founders. One of them Walter Speight used the local neighborhood and landscape as the subject of many of his paintings.

The other show with an acronym is scheduled to open tomorrow, not a few blocks but another continent away. More on that later.

Life Butts In

2011-10-22T17:09:00.000-04:00

So just as I finish my latest post about taking liberties with the birds I see and paint I hear a neighbor yell out to another neighbor that a bird has just flown into his window. When I went over to check I found a beautiful Hermit Thrush.

Actually we'd seen our first Hermit Thrush of the fall yesterday at the Andorra section of Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. They're just starting to move through and some may stay. We've been lucky enough to have them as visitors during the last couple of years.

I thought about bringing my camera or sketchbook over to my neighbors but thought it more important to get there and check the health and ID of bird, not that I would have had much of an idea as to how to help it. When I got there the bird was standing up. Soon he flew up a few feet to the top of a garden fence. He just sat there for all to admire, though I'm sure that wasn't his intention. Just as I thought about heading back home for camera or sketchbook he flew.

But he was a beautiful bird. So I felt like doing some sort of visual documentation. This watercolor is based on a photo of one that was in the backyard early this spring. You can tell it's early due to my highly abstracted version of Gill-Over-The-Ground.

Taking Liberties

2011-10-18T13:26:00.004-04:00

While waiting for my computer to reboot after finishing the painting above I leafed through a new issue of a birding magazine that included some photos of Common Redpolls. I was reminded again of how beautiful birds can be. You can see why many people desire to represent them as accurately as possible.

Of course one can easily argue about what is meant by accuracy. I've done it at other times. But for now I just mean something that resembles photos but doesn't mimic them. Some would say it emphasizes a scientific approach to birds over an artistic one.

The painting at top is pretty much in direct contradiction to this notion. I've taken great liberties in this ballpoint pen, watercolor and gouache painting. Why? Well I can't really say except that that is what I wanted to do. I wasn't interested in portraying the birds, especially the Black Tern, accurately.

For me the problem with this naturalistic type of art, at least if I'm doing it, is that the bird often seems dead when I'm done. Not always. I've done some paintings that are fairly naturalistic and I'm happy with them. But they're not my natural inclination. That's not to say that other artists don't manage this style wonderfully. But for me it rarely seems natural or true to myself.

When I think about taking liberties I often think of Matisse, and of the painting Tea in particular. I first saw this painting at least 30 years ago. But it still stays with me.

The painting combines abstraction, design, color, realistic portrayal all in one painting. And yet it doesn't at all look like a photo. But look at the way the dog scratches and the shoe of one woman dangles on her foot. Look at the sense of dappled light. There is a breath of life in this painting that is often missing from more scientific renderings.

I won't begin to claim that the small painting, really more of a sketch, matches the ambition of Matisse's masterpiece. But I think it may help explain my motivation in doing it. Sometimes an accurate portrayal doesn't seem enough. I'd like to do more. I'm sure much of this comes from my many years painting and loving what was once referred to as 'modern art.'

Above is another version of the Bladdernut and distant immature Red-headed Woodpecker. It is done in Caran d'Ache Neo-color II water soluble crayons, and a lot of water. I think it's very similar in motivation to the painting at top. In both instances I'm taking something naturalistic and using is as a leaping off point for something more abstract, more 'modern.'

It's very odd saying 'modern'. After all this term was first used more than 100 years ago. So it's not really modern in the sense of being new. But it is modern in the sense of coming out of that tradition. I don't claim that this tradition is better than a more realistic or naturalistic one. It's hard to deny the tremendous excesses that have come out of modernism and it's easy to understand why some might dislike it. But for me what is good, strong and true there is undeniable.

If I follow my heart in what I paint it more often goes toward naturalism saturated in modernism than anything else. I suppose another way of saying this is that I'm just trying to make what I see have some expressive power.

These two paintings are steps along the way to something more finished I think. Either or both may end up as paintings or prints. This is my way of moving in that direction. I've taken some liberties with realistic rendering and my guess there will be more along the way.

Oh Bladdernut!

2011-10-14T16:35:00.000-04:00

I went out in search of Red-headed Woodpecker the last two days with no luck. I haven't seen it in three days so my guess is that it's gone.

Every once in awhile I run into the shrub portrayed at right above in the fall along the Wissahickon. And always have to look it up. It's Bladdernut. My guess it that it's more nondescript in spring and summer, hidden behind much green.

Today it was wet and foggy and that made the shrub, and particulary its seed pods, stand out. It's only in fall I think that I'm tempted to show photos for their beauty rather than for any documentary purpose. The dark graceful shapes of the seedpods against the brilliant yellows, oranges, reds and browns of the leaves was too much to pass up.

More than that it gave me an idea for a painting. I really only saw the Red-headed Woodpecker in the distance, atop a 60' snag. But portraying just that rarely works. So I thought about putting the bladdernut in the foreground and leaving a very small Red-headed Woodpecker in the background.

And that's what I did. I first did the drawing with a Bic pen, then decided to add watercolor wash. I didn't realize that the ink would run horribly. So almost all colors have some black in them, and the lines ran. So I added white gouache to try to redefine the shape of the distant woodpecker.

All in all I'm happy with this. It's so easy to feel that everything has already been done in bird art. One thing I often do is to try to combine a realistic environment and the bird in such a way as to make it seem fresh. I hope it seems fresh.Eventually I may work with this theme again, either as a painting or a print.

The Problem with Redheads

2011-10-12T10:28:00.002-04:00

There are some birds that are bold and beautiful in nature that always seem to end up dead on canvas. The first I ran into was a Scarlet Tanager. That brilliant red and black is so striking in real life. But try to put it down in paint, especially from a photo, and it seems to turn to mud. Same thing with a Red-headed Woodpecker, especially with the mature red-maroon head.

I think the reason for this is that both birds are largely undifferentiated areas of full color, black, white and two types of red, an orange red and a maroon red. The black and white would do well in a graphic design but never seems to work as a painting. Though I've never seen a Cock of the Rock the paintings I see always look horribly dead, even given the bright orange red of the bird. There seems to be a similar problem with it.

I took quite a number of photos of a Red-headed Woodpecker in Illinois a few years ago. As is typical it was on a snag silhouetted against an undifferentiated blue gray sky. I could never convince myself to do a painting of it. The best I could do was a felt tip drawing that accentuated the trees and sky as much as the bird.

So it seems hopeless right? Well until you see this Audubon painting. What imagination, both in terms of formal composition and actual event portrayed. All of the potential problems of portraying a Red-headed Woodpecker are smashed to bits. As Julie Zickefoose says after seeing work like that other artists might just as well pick up their toys and go home.

Growing up as someone most interested in abstract art I could never quite see the appeal of Audubon. I also couldn't tell where he fit in with the likes of Picasso and Matisse. Many people seemed to have his prints or reproductions of them. He must be considered an artist of some sort. I didn't actually dislike him. I just couldn't categorize him. I think that's one problem with learning something when young. You tend to think things belong into the categories you've been taught about. Then you realize that sometimes they don't.

The more I've done bird art the more my respect for Audubon has grown. The amount of imagination in this Red-headed Woodpecker painting I find staggering.

The other artist I automatically turn to for something like this is Louis Agassiz Fuertes. Some birders prefer him to Audubon. Much as I like Fuertes I prefer Audubon. Fuertes seems to have done a number of versions of this bird. One is here. There are others that are somewhat more dynamic in composition but I hesitate to link to sites I'm not familiar with. I think the one shown here shows the problems I mention with a Red-headed. They are just so simple: black, red, white, often on a grayish snag against a blue sky. It's very hard to make an interesting painting out of that. Fuertes does a good job. But to me Audubon creates art!

For any readers who have come here via my post on the Pennsylvania Rare Bird List I think this post may help explain why I'm not that concerned with taking documentary photos of birds I see, even when they are rare. I'm always much more interesting in painting a lively portrait of the bird, one that combines accuracy and art.

All of which is a very long way of saying that the immature Red-headed Woodpecker that I found along the Wissahickon in Philadelphia on Monday was also there on Tuesday in the same location. The watercolor at top is based primarily on a photo I took on Tuesday.

The best way to find the area if you're not familiar with it is to look at the trail map published by Friends of the Wissahickon. Unfortunately you cannot see it online. If you have the map the bird is in a snag across the stream from Forbidden Drive right upstream of where Gorgas Lane trail meets Forbidden Drive. There is a large 60' snag that is clearly visible and hard to miss. If you don't have the map you can use the Google map at the FOW site. Unfortunately it's not easy. If you see Gorgas Park on the left side of the map center it on the map. Then keep enlarging it until you see a tributary stream feeding into the Wissahickon. That is Gorgas Lane trail and the snag is right across the Wissahickon. You can cross the bridge a few hundred yards to get closer but you can actually see it better from the Forbidden Drive side. I haven't been out today but may check again on Thursday or Friday. Since it was there two days in a row I hope it will stick around awhile longer.

Semi-Annual Photos

2011-10-10T17:09:00.001-04:00

About once or maybe twice a year I break down and post just photos. I make a concerted effort not to use photos but sometimes they seem appropriate. This is one of those times.

My guess is that few people have seen Red-headed Woodpeckers in Philadelphia. They're not uncommon elsewhere, but they are here. So I wanted to go back out and see if the Red-headed was still there and also to photograph it. Mainly I did this in case anyone else wanted to try for the bird.

It took awhile but I did find the bird in the same place, almost directly across from the Gorgas Lane entrance onto Forbidden Drive. I first went across the Wissahickon and stood right under the snag where I'd seen him earlier. I was there for 30 minutes but saw nothing. So I went back across the creek where the snag is clearly visible but much further away. I didn't seem him so moved on and found the mystery bird mentioned further down.

Eventually I made my way back to the 60' snag and there he was. So I spent about 15 minutes taking these photos. They are poor in quality but I think will convince anyone of the ID: juvenile Red-headed.

This bird was a real shock because of his blinding whiteness. My first thought was pigeon. But I rarely see them along the Wissahickon, and they never land except at Valley Green. Was it a dove? Didn't really look like it either, though the only one I really know is the Mourning Dove. So I snapped some photos, tried to get closer and scared off.

He moved very quickly like a hawk. But I've also been surprised at how fast pigeons moved. So I assume pigeon. But as I walked back toward the Red-headed I wondered. Could it be a kite? I don't know kites at all and certainly have never seen them this close. The more I thought about it the more I convinced myself that I'd topped the Red-headed with a kite.

When I got home though and pulled out my guides I couldn't convince myself that it was a kite of any sort. If anyone reading this has any opinions let me know. But for now, sad to say, I'm leaving it as a pigeon.

Red-headed Woodpecker - A Documentation Break

2011-10-10T12:37:00.001-04:00

I always have to decide whether or not to bring my camera with me when I'm birding. Since my primary concern is always to see and sketch birds I often don't want the baggage of the camera. But often I'm also taking along a scope and tripod so the added weight of a camera is negligible. Today wasn't one of those days though.

I expected that most of the warblers were now gone, even though we saw 7 Black-throated Blues yesterday and almost 20 Yellow-rumps. If it's the height of migration I'm more likely to bring a camera too since I think I might be able to get some good reference photos.

So no camera today. A half hour into my walk, right past the Gorgas Lane entrance to Forbidden Drive I saw some movement in a 60-80 foot snag across the water. Two birds were chasing one another. Once I got my binoculars on them I found the first to be a Northern Flicker. No surprise. I've seen a lot of them recently. So I figured the second would be as well.

But not when I saw that flash of white on the wings. A Red-headed! I've never seen one in Philadelphia before. Expert birders I've talked to say that they are here very occasionally and almost always immatures.

The light on this one made it hard to see color. The white on wings was obvious but I really couldn't determine head or back color, at least on this first view. But there was no doubt it was a Red-headed.

Over the next two hours I got numerous looks at the bird, some much better than others. Then I could see that the back was dark gray-black and that the head was definitely not the deep, almost maroon red of the mature bird. So this was an immature.

At top are the field sketches I made. Things that struck me were the elegant sleekness of bird. The neck and head looked slimmer than I recall from other times I've seen the bird. Perhaps this was due to it being an immature. Or maybe it was just its pose. I also saw that there were a few black markings on the white section of the wings, something that Sibley notes in his rendering of the immature.

One of the great things about sketching is that you do notice things like this. I don't think I ever previously noticed those markings on an immature. I haven't yet checked my guides to see if the Red-headed is smaller than the Red-bellied. That was my impression though I had nothing to compare it to. I didn't really notice its smaller size when it chased off the Northern Flicker. Other woodpeckers landed in the tree but it seemed to reappear quickly and chase them off. I don't see Red-headeds often enough to have an impression of their character. But based on what I saw today I'd guess that they are agressive.

Out in October

2011-10-07T17:54:00.000-04:00

We've spent most of the last three beautiful sunny days outside. Morris Arboretum, Carpenter's Woods, Wissahickon Environmental Center at Andorra and Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education are all very local birding spots and we visited them all, often more than once.

I'm never fond of the shortening days of fall. But days like the last three make up for it: blue skies, sun, comfortable weather, the smell of decomposing leaves, leaves starting to turn color, the familiar sound of migrating Blue Jays, but most of all the migrating birds. Most are passing through on their way south. But some are new arrivals from the north that will probably stay here.

So our lists for last few days are full of the former; Black-throated Green, Black-throated Blue, Magnolia, Tennessee, Northern Parula, Black and White and Yellow-rumped Warblers among them. At the same time some of the latter are also appearing, including the handsome Swamp Sparrow portrayed at top, White-throated Sparrows which will probably stay until next May, Field Sparrows, which may have been here all summer. Rusty Indigo Buntings are sparrows that are on their way south as is the White-crowned Sparrow.

The season is turning from one of warblers to one of sparrows. And ducks if we visit water. It's a great time to be out and see this variety of birds.

We saw a few Swamp Sparrows a couple of days ago at Morris Arboretum, the first of the fall. I did a field sketch that just didn't turn out. The watercolor at top is based on a photo I took of one at Higbee Beach in Cape May, NJ about this time last year. They are a truly handsome bird. They're not as bright and bold as warblers but still subtly handsome in their own way.

I'm not thrilled with this watercolor. Though I tried to sketch out some detail for the background it disappeared as I tried to get the color and light to work. But I'm not unhappy with the sparrow. It shows I think that wonderful combination of dark gray, dark brown and chestnut. Catching that was one of my main goals and so I'm happy to have gotten that.

If I'm lucky I'll have a few more weeks of warm weather in which to see and sketch these beauties.

Empty Perches, Empty Nest and Francis Speight

2011-10-03T18:03:00.000-04:00

The flocks of American Robins and Northern Flickers we saw today during a brief walk at Carpenter's Woods should be enough to convince us that the season has changed from summer to fall.

But a visit to Morris Arboretum on Friday after dropping off my last piece for the group show had other signs: empty perches. There on that dead tree should be a Eastern Kingbird. That large dead tree over there should hold one or more Belted Kingfishers, Tree Swallows, maybe some Cedar Waxwings and possibly a Great Blue Heron. The smaller trees there in the pond should hold more Cedar Waxwings, some Eastern Phoebes and maybe a Willow Flycatcher or two.

But almost all of the perches were empty. Most of the birds that use them have gone. I did see a couple of Eastern Phoebes in another area and Belted Kingfishers and Great Blues can be around all winter. But the Eastern Kingbirds are gone for good I think, as are the Tree Swallows and Willow Flycatchers. Even though Cedar Waxwings can be found somewhere in Philadelphia most winters I've rarely if ever seen them here.

I think because I saw so few birds on Friday it really struck me that another summer has turned to fall. As I left one bird did take his place atop one of the dead trees, much higher than I usually see him. That is the Northern Mockingbird, seen in the quick fieldsketch at top.

The empty nest I refer to is my studio. I've spent the last few weeks working on my first acrylic painting in 20 years or so as well as making mats for watercolors and a frame for the acrylic. But acrylic and watercolors were delivered on Friday.

Now the studio seems empty: an empty nest. The photo above shows the finished painting as well as the finished frame. Due to complications like the size of the fence on my handheld rabbet plane, there is a much deeper lip on the frame than I wanted. So this looks a bit like a shadow box, something I didn't intend to make at all. But I convinced myself that it fit with the subject and kept it.

Once I put the painting in the frame the orange in the reflections at upper right looked positively garish. I decided I really needed to tone it down. So the final version is much more subdued than I originally intended.

It is proudly hanging in the 55th Annual Members Show of the Manayunk Roxborough Art Center. When I was much younger I had no interest at all in anything that had a tradition. That gave it no special cachet with me. But as I've gotten older I've developed a greater respect and appreciation for things with a tradition - like a show that has been going on for 55 years.

Part of this is probably just due to being older myself. But I think much of it is just a reaction against a throwaway culture. I once bought a used wooden woodworking plane that was from 19th century France. I didn't pay much for it. But it is functional and I love the idea of using the same tool that someone else did over 100 years ago. I like the sense of continuity and common cause and purpose.

I was particularly reminded of this while gallery sitting at the group show on Saturday. While there I noticed a plaque commemorating the original founders. Among them was Francis Speight!

Francis Speight you say? I'm sure not everyone will know him. In fact I had to search online to see if he was who I thought he was. And he was.

When I first moved to the Manayunk Roxborough area I was strictly an abstract artist. But over the years I kept thinking that this areas, particularly the hills and the view of the Schuylkill River below, needed to be painted. There was and still is an undeniable beauty.

As I investigated, informally and inexactly to be sure, I found that there were artists who had painted its beauty. One of, if not, THE best was Francis Speight. This painting of his is not much different from the view from our house if I walk a few 100 yards to get a view between neighboring houses and down the hill to the Schuylkill River. Cotton Street, the same Cotton Street in the title of the painting, is just a few blocks away.

So I've always, well for the last 10-15 years anyway, had a special appreciation for Francis Speight. To find that he was one of the founding members of the Art coop I just joined was more than I could have expected. It's a great honor to be part of such a tradition. Obviously this area was once a thriving area for the arts. Hopefully it will soon be so again.

Killdeer Getting There

2011-09-27T12:54:00.000-04:00

I wanted to start off this post by quoting Henri Matisse about how every part of one of his paintings has its place and is important. I thought of it this morning while various considerations about my current painting flitted in and out of my mind. As they did I realized that a good painting is like an orchestral composition, with many parts all working together: the light, the color, the shapes, the brushwork, the lines, the values, the objects, their evocations, etc.

As soon as I thought symphony and orchestra I was reminded of Matisse's quote. It used to be when I remembered a quote like this I'd go search through my books hoping I could find it without spending too much time. But now we have the internet right? No need for books.

Well the problem with that is the sloppiness of the internet. Someone may say that something is a quote of Matisse but how do I know it's correct? I read two versions of one quote today that had somewhat different meanings depending on how much of the quote was shown. So I don't trust what I've found and am not going to use it. It seems safer to just paraphrase my recollection.

All of which just leads to the thought that I'm getting happier with this painting and all the various parts of it that I'm trying to get to work together. The newest version is at top.

You may notice that the killdeer is about the only constant. Everything else is changing. I hope it will stay that way. I've liked the bird from the beginning and have made only minimal changes.

I think this painting is also heading more toward naturalism now. The abstract pattern of the water is still there but it's toned down quite a bit. I've gone back and forth between naturalism and stylization in this. For now it seems like naturalism will win out. And yet even in naturalism every part of the painting has its place, every brushstroke, every color. In that sense every painting is somewhat abstract.

I need to turn this in for the show by Friday, and frame it before that. So soon it will be done one way or the other, at least temporarily.

Exorcising Styles

2011-09-25T17:08:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I've really struggled with a painting. I surely do remember watercolors that drove me up the wall - I just couldn't control the medium. And there were some pastels that went on and on.

With watercolor the problem was that I just couldn't get the medium to do what I wanted. It's a very difficult medium.

With the pastels though, and now with this acrylic, it's not so much that I can't control the medium as the fact that I can't figure out what I want to do. Particularly in acrylic it's easy to achieve an effect and get seduced by it. I think all artists know this problem. Sometimes with no effort at all you get something that looks good. Sometimes it just reminds you of the style of another artist that you liked at one time. Because it reminds you of something you liked in another's work it's tempting to accept it in your own.

And there's nothing wrong with this. But I think at least for me there's often a lingering doubt that I'm settling for easy effects and not really painting a personally honest painting. This isn't always true. I'm sure that there are many fellow artists who say of an artist: Why can't he just leave it alone? It looks great now and he's going to beat it into deadness. That's the artist's dilemma I think - knowing when to call it quits and save any urges to change for another painting.

Well this is a roundabout way to say that I keep changing this painting sometimes drastically. The painting at top is version four.

Below is version three. I'm finding a real glare on acrylics that I didn't find in watercolors. That makes it very hard to see. This version was painted late in the day when the light was bad. It got far darker than I intended.

And below is version number two. As with all the versions I felt that the top portion/background didn't work with the bottom portion/foreground. This was the first attempt to solve that.

One of the things I've also struggled with is stylization versus naturalism. The bottom portion is slightly more realistic. The top is more stylized. I did have it more naturalistic at one point but didn't like it and quickly switched back. As an experienced artist I have all sorts of influences. Right now the top portion reminds me more of Abstract Expressionism and the bottom a bit of Wayne Thiebaud and all the high key landscape painters, especially those from California where I lived for many years. I remember liking this style all the way back to what I always found to be the source Corot.

But Corot and Abstract Expressionism don't mix, particularly with a bird stuck in the middle.

So I'll be spending some time trying to make this into a honest painting with a unified style. I don't know if it's a curse or a blessing that with acrylic there's almost no limit to the changes you can make!

Pushing Paint Around

2011-09-22T17:25:00.000-04:00

When I was a child I did my first oil painting, probably based on some very cheap beginner set. But it didn't work the way it was supposed to. The paints stayed wet and when I went to put one color over another I got a big mess. I hated oil paint as a kid.

When I went to art school I painted in both acrylic and then later oil. By then I liked the fact that the paint stayed wet. It gave me far more flexibility and let to all sorts of interesting effects.

But since we moved to our house almost 20 years ago I have not painted in either acrylic or oils. I took up watercolor about six years ago at the same time I started drawing and painting birds.

I've been happy with watercolor. But you can't push paint around the way you can with oil and acrylic. You have to be more thoughtful about the first marks you put down.

Since I've gotten comfortable with painting and drawing birds I've had a desire recently to try acrylics again. Today I did.

This is a small 12x18 canvas. It's based on the ball point pen drawing from a week or two ago. I'm sure I can find ways to improve this, if not ruin it. But for now I'm just happy with the fact that I can push some paint around again. It's a thrill.

Kildeer on the Way to a Painting

2011-09-20T17:17:00.000-04:00

I bought my first acrylic paints in over 20 years about a week ago. I painted in acrylic for about 10 years, then switched to oils for another 10 years or so. But when I moved from my live-in studio to my home with my wife and cats I felt I really couldn't safely use oils and their solvents in the house.

Perhaps I could have switched back to acrylics but there was a problem with that too. No room was big enough for the really large abstract paintings I used to do.Since I switched from abstract to naturalistic about six years ago it made some sense to do my paintings in watercolor. It is traditionally used at a smaller size than many oils and it's pretty safe to use at home.

So I've used it, more or less starting from scratch, for the last six years.As much as I love watercolor and as much as I think I've improved with it there are still moments when I miss the freedom that acrylics and oils offer. So that was the impetus that got me to buy those acrylics recently.

I've spent a lot of time recently looking through photos and old sketches trying to find the subject for my first acrylic. The Bic pen sketch at top seemed like it might work as a painting. I could see myself finding a lot to play with in the water and foreground sand and rocks.

But last night I finally became a member of the Manayunk Roxborough Art Center Artists Coop. And there is a group show in less than two weeks! All of a sudden I started thinking about what I could include in the show.

Rather than undertaking a painting in a medium I haven't used in 20 years it seemed better to return to small watercolors. So that is the second image at top, a breeding male Kildeer seen at the wetlands pond at Morris Arboretum this spring.

Those orange washes on some of the feathers are just irresistible.I may touch this up a bit but I've already gone overboard with the background and lost a bit of the sparkle of untouched paper. So I'll do very little more.

I had thought I would use kildeer on my way to my first acrylic painting. Instead I ended up with a surprise watercolor painting. But I can't complain. Unless I turn it into complete mud there is always something appealing about watercolor. Acrylic will have to wait a bit.

Better Philadelphia Birding

2011-09-16T09:44:00.000-04:00

Any local readers may wonder just how I or anyone might propose to make Philadelphia birding better. A very good question. Surely I'm not about to announce my patent on attracting rare birds. No. My discovery was accidental.

The PA Audubon Rare Bird List listserve had an email the other day about an unofficial 'Bird Day' this coming Saturday, September 17. When I looked at the link for Pennsylvania Audubon I found a short article about three bird festivals this weekend. Below that I found a link to a new Fairmount Park IBA Bird Checklist.

It's the latter that's my secret for better Philadelphia Birding. Compiled by Keith Russell of Audubon PA it's a wonderful essay and checklist of birds found within Fairmount Park, including Benjamin Rush State Park. Keith has organized the Philadelphia Mid-winter Bird Census for 25 years. I and Jerene have taken part in it for the last five or six years.Each mid-winter report is a thrill to read, noting what birds are here in early January, and also how their numbers compare to birds seen in previous years.

The new Fairmount Park checklist is the similar but on a much larger scale. Each species is shown in a bar graph that shows frequency by month. Also included in the same bar graph is likelihood of presence in six locations: Wissahickon, Pennypack, East West Reservoirs, Cobbs Creek, Poquessing/Benjamin Rush State Park, and Roosevelt Park. Looking at a random entry I see that a Semi-palmated Sandpiper is only likely to be seen at Pennypack, especially in May, July, August and September. A rarer Philadelphia Vireo is likely to be seen if at all, during September and early October at any of the locations.

Of course there are other Philadelphia locations where birds might be seen. But this checklist encompasses many of the areas available to birders. It's particularly valuable to me since I spend so much time at the Wissahickon. It also makes me more likely to investigate areas like Pennypack, Benjamin Rush or Roosevelt Parks.

What I most enjoy though are the species entries. For instance the entry on the Philadelphia Vireo, a species we THINK we've seen twice at Magee Marsh in Ohio both spring and fall migration was first discovered in 1842 by John Cassin in an area of Fairmount Park known as Bingham's Woods. Now it is observed only during fall migrations with rare exceptions.This type of information is both invaluable and just plain fun to read.

Some beginning birders might find it a bit overwhelming though even for them the graphs and species accounts indicate the likelihood of seeing certain species at certain times and places. It's always good to know how likely birds are to be seen in any locale, regardless of how experienced you are. I think the checklist is most valuable though to slightly more experienced birders. It's thoroughly enjoyable to read a species account and compare it to your own experiences, or to read that species that you rarely see are actually fairly common at Roosevelt Park for instance.

And of course there is the history. To me it's fascinating to know how the Philadelphia Vireo got its name and to know its local connection.In keeping with this historical theme one of the three festivals taking place tomorrow is the Cradle of Birding festival at Tinicum.

We've never been before but are going to try to make it tomorrow. Philadelphia really is the Cradle of Birding in many ways. I always forget that, especially since I have little connection to much of the local birding community. If I had I'd probably be more mindful of it. In any case it is amazing to realize how much of American birding took place here. It should be enjoyable to go to a festival celebrating that. The newly arrived cooler weather should make ti all the more enjoyable.

Finally, if you've made it this far, I did the small 8x5 inch watercolor at top as an illustration of one of our local birds that appears on Keith's checklist. This is based on a photo I took of a Pileated Woodpecker drilling into a dead tree with the Wissahickon behind and below him. The stream, and the large rocks in it, visible through a few inches of water, is what gives the yellow-green color to the painting. I'm not too happy with this watercolor but it does serve it's purpose of illustrating local birds. And it's the first watercolor I've done of one of my favorite local birds. Maybe it will lead to more.

More Shorebirds in Ink

2011-09-14T13:54:00.000-04:00

I picked up some acrylic paints and a couple of small stretched canvases yesterday. I haven't painted in oil or acrylic in about 20 years. But there has been a hankering, especially as I've gotten more comfortable using birds and nature as my subject.As I wait for inspiration, or perhaps courage, to hit me though and get me to start that first painting I continue to experiment with ball point pen and shorebirds.

I've always liked ink. It can be intimidating since it's permanent. You can't erase a line as you can with pencil. Since my lines tend to feel their way along, searching for the right contour, rather than precisely putting down the correct line as soon as the pen hits the paper this can present a problem. I'm likely to have a lot of exploratory lines.But this rarely bothers me. I tend to make the first lines light and then darken them when I'm more certain.

Of course this doesn't always work. Sometimes I make a dark line where I'm wanting to delineate the edge of a light object. The line looks wrong. But I just live with it.I think the appeal of ink is that it's permanent. So the same thing that makes it intimidating also makes it appealing. It's an odd thing. Still I like it. I don't have to worry as much about smudging as I do with pencil. And the end result almost always looks more like a finished work of art.

The 'quickest' line I ever found was made with a bamboo pen dipped in ink. It flew across the paper, often leaving huge ink drips in its way. I don't use it anymore. But there is a lot of speed in the Bic 537R ball point pen I'm testing out. There's nothing inherently good about quickness in a drawing instrument. But for me I think the appeal is that the pen can keep up with the speed of my thoughts or intuition on what to do next in the drawing. It just moves effortlessly, like there's a direct connection from my brain to the paper.

I have loved drawings for as long as I can remember. Not that I want to compare myself but when I try to render the mud and water in the drawings above I'm reminded of how much I used to love Rembrandt's drawings and the way his landscapes in pen and ink, and sometimes wash, seemed to so effortlessly portray land, water, sun and shade. They were a miracle of draftsmanship. I think it's partially remembering that aspect of his drawings and many other great drawings that keeps me interested in doing these.

As I said I do have some new acrylics and some new linoleum blocks. But for now I'm just captivated by pen and ink.The drawings are based on photos I took at Cape May in mid-August. I also did many field sketches and I'm sure that experience enters in as well. At top is a Pectoral Sandpiper. I probably should have elongated his neck just a tad. Below him the always striking Black Skimmer. I rarely see them as close as this one. So it was a great opportunity to sketch and take photos. Also in the drawing a small Least Sandpiper, hidden by some reeds. The Black Skimmer is such an unusual looking bird, and an elegant one, that I'm sure I will return to him.

More Least And ...

2011-09-12T17:49:00.000-04:00

As you may have guessed I can't resist all the verbal tricks that are occasioned by an adjective that also functions as a noun.The 'least' I'm talking about is the Least Sandpiper a very small shorebird, and I believe the smallest US sandpiper.

Some artists I really admire at birdforum.net, Alan Dalton and Paschalis Dougalis, have recently shown work in ballpoint pen. As I recall both mentioned using the ubiquitous Bic pen, though European versions are not the same as American ones. Still it was enough of an impetus to get me to find some Bic pens and give one a try. One reason for this is that I like the idea of the quick line available from a ball point pen. The line can move very quickly. It doesn't get stuck in the surface of the paper.

A White-rumped Sandpiper is the star of the drawing above. He's what follows the 'And ...' in the title. He's surrounded by Least Sandpipers, all seen at the ponds near the hawk watch platform at Cape May Point State Park. This was one of many lifer White-rumped Sandpipers that we saw there. What I liked about the photo that this is based on is that it shows how different their poses are. In fact my drawing is a bit off in not having a greater angle in the White-rump. Its tail tilts up about 5 degrees more than I show. So in silhouette it really looks much different than a Least. And of course it is larger and more slender.

I often buy new media with the thought of trying them for field sketching, just like the people who first got me interested in them. But odd things happen and I often try them first at home in the studio. That was the case with this drawing. Now that I've tried it out I do anticipate giving it a try in the field.I really like the sepia Pitt Artists pens that I currently use. But I'd like to also give this a try. You never know where new media will lead

When I lived in San Francisco in the early 70s there was a seemingly universal idea in the air: Try Everything. I didn't and in fact it sounded sort of foolish. It still does. But it's also foolish to get stuck in a rut. For me I've found that I need to digest one medium or method of work enough to get some feel for it. Eventually I'll want to try something new. And I do. But the idea of constantly trying something new is something that's always seemed silly to me. In any case I feel fortunate in being able to change media at a comfortable pace.

This is also done on Stillman & Birn Gamma paper, with a Bic 537R pen. .7 mm. point.

The Least I Can Do

2011-09-09T10:06:00.001-04:00

Or maybe the Least (Sandpiper) I can't do. You'll have to judge for yourself based on the images above.

Unlike my last entry of the Whimbrels both of these are based on photos that I took. The larger watercolor on 9x12 inch Arches 300# cold press paper is of an immature Least Sandpiper that I saw at Morris Arboretum in late July/early August. The second is a small drawing using Derwent watercolor pencils on 7x10 Stillman & Birn Gamma sketchbook paper. I believe that photo was taken at Tinicum at the same time, though it also might have been taken in Cape May in mid-August.

I've never liked watercolor pencils. They're not my cup of tea. But I recently realized that some drawings by Michael Warren in his book 'Shorelines' might have been done in color pencils. The drawings struck me as a good way to do quick color sketches in the field. So I brought out my old Derwents. But I immediately started doing a drawing that was more painting than drawing, especially after I added water. So I completely contradicted my original intention of testing color pencils as a way of doing quick field sketches. I and color pencils just don't seem to have a future.

The watercolor on the other hand has its own complications. I've only used this paper a few times before. I thought I'd be happy with 300# pound paper since it should be less apt to warp. That's probably true. But I can't make a clean brushstroke. As though being sucked in by a powerful vacuum as soon as the brush gets near the paper the water and pigment seem to jump off and form a streaky blob. The end result is that I end up working with more pure pigment and a very heavy brush. So the painting gets dark and looks more like an oil painting than a watercolor.

Still you learn something from every medium you try. Or at least you do if you pay some attention. Otherwise things could get very frustrating! I think this is an example of the fact that almost all visual art, and maybe all art, has to be a dialog with your medium. You can never fully control it, though you can certainly control it more than I do. But in the end there's always a give and take. That's particularly true in printmaking, which I may return to one of these days.

By the way the Least Sandpiper is among the smallest of shorebirds, unlike the Whimbrel of my last post. It's on the large end of the spectrum. I rarely see shorebirds in Philadelphia unless I make a special trip to Tinicum. But I'm starting to see Least Sandpipers with some regularity at the nearby Morris Arboretum. It almost seems like they're becoming old friends.

Thoughts on Field Sketching

2011-09-03T11:22:00.000-04:00

The small watercolor, about 7x10 inches, above is based on a very quick field sketch I did of a Whimbrel raising its wings on Nummy Island near Stone Harbor, NJ a couple of weeks ago. The field sketch is below.

One of the things about sketching, and not photographing birds, as you see them is that you can convince yourself to try difficult but striking poses. Often in nature you get these surprises that are just there for a split second. As an aside at about the same time I saw this bird I also saw the grisly spectacle of a Great Blue Heron finding and swallowing whole a Clapper Rail youngster. It was too far away for me to see clearly. Grisly as it is I might have been tempted to sketch it if I could have seen it better.

My point though is that I think it allows you the chance to try something that you might think is beyond your abilities. As with many things you often find that you can do better than you expect, if you just try.

Now I have a lengthy history of deep disappointment with my field sketching so I'm not being hopelessly optimistic about this. But time and experience has shown me that the biggest obstacle is just the fear of trying. If you keep at it the results are surprising.

In addition you can come home with the seed of a painting of a striking experience. It's possible that I might have been able to get a photo of this. Unlikely but possible. The problem for me as an artist is that I don't get much artistic inspiration from my photos. Not for all of them but for many. With field sketches though I really recall the entire experience. There's a real desire to put it into a painting.

In fact I also have some photos of whimbrels I saw a year or two ago. I've looked at them many times but never felt enough of a connection to start a painting. But once I decided to do a painting based on the field sketch it was much easier to use the photo as the source for the background birds here. But it took the field sketch for me to decide to do it.

The sketch took about a minute. The bird had its wings up for a split second. I had to trust that I had seen it well enough in that split second to put it down on paper. Over time I've gotten much more trusting about that. And I'm almost always pleased with the results. I think we always underestimate how sentient we are.

Wild Turkey Juxtaposition

2011-08-31T10:41:00.000-04:00

When we visited Metzger Marsh in Ohio near the Ottawa NWR last May we abruptly stopped one day as we saw a Wild Turkey along the road. As he seemed oblivious to us and let me sketch and click away we began to wonder just how wild he was. Across the road in the Neocolor II Crayon drawing/painting above is a 'yacht club.' Was he the official mascot?

I'm sure not. But there was something oddly tame about him, as though he was quite accustomed to humans. When we see Wild Turkeys in the wild they're gone at the first recognition of us, often from 100 yards away or more.

There is a small canal that runs along the 1-mile road out to Lake Erie. We found all sorts of warblers in the woods along the lake last May. In the canal were numerous egrets and herons, and I guess a Double-crested Cormorant or two. It was only when I got home and looked at my photos that I noticed a picture of the turkey with a cormorant in the background. This is not it. It's a composite of various views. But I've always been struck by the odd juxtaposition and yesterday finally decided to do something about it.

As I mentioned above I used Caran d'Ache Neocolor II water soluble crayons. I bought them before our trip to Ohio in the hopes that I'd use them to add color to my field sketches. I've tried watercolor pencils in the field and gotten nowhere. Pretty much the same with Pitt Artist's felt tip pens. So I thought I'd add crayons to the arsenal.

I never had the occasion to use them on the trip but I have used them in the studio. The nicest thing about them for me is that it's easier than with most media to paint light over dark. Often, as in watercolor or felt tip pen, you just can't get a clean light color over a darker one. And given my penchant for changing my mind as I go along I like to have that option.

The other nice thing is that these are water soluble. So you can also use a wet brush and turn the drawing into something like a watercolor. Then you can go back on top with the crayon to add vibrancy or detail.

More than anything I think this type of drawing/painting serves as a study. I can work out an idea and get some feeling for whether or not it's worth more development in another medium.

I'm also using the hardworking Stillman and Birn Gamma sketchbook for this. They really are sketchbooks and at least this part of the series, Gamma, is not meant for all the water I put on it. Still it doesn't break down. It warps a bit but not enough that I can't work on it.

So for me the combination of sketchbook and crayon work very well for my artistic experiments.

Hurricane Irene - Art Before and After

2011-08-28T13:10:00.001-04:00

Yesterday when we prepared, as best we could, for Hurricane Irene's impact my main thought was WIND. Rain could be so strong as to flood our basement but wind could both bring down trees and cut our power and bring down trees on our house or car. There is a huge Silver Maple in a neighbor's yard. I've always preferred to have trees than not, unlike many of our neighbors who seem to consider the leaves a nuisance. But with ground that was already saturated with record-breaking rain, 6-12 inches predicted and winds of up to 70 mph I wondered just how stable that maple was.

So wind was on my mind. I remembered a photo I'd taken last May of a Green Heron landing in a far tree in the wind at Magee Marsh in Ohio. It seemed like a good subject for a 15 minute flash watercolor. It's at top. Due to rain and distance I really couldn't see any color - just some varations in blue-gray.

Yesterday was so dark that the light just wasn't good enough to undertake anything major. And of course we never knew when we might need to drop everything.

Eventually the boredom of waiting for the storm took over though and I started something a bit more developed based on some photos of an Ovenbird from a number of years ago.

Oddly we never saw much of the anticipated wind yesterday. I was up very late and still didn't see signs of a really strong wind. Today though, now that Hurricane Irene has been downgraded to Tropical Storm Irene, the wind has really picked up. The recently trimmed Silver Maples outside the window are whipping around and the panes in the window are rattling.

It really LOOKS more dangerous today. The photo above shows the early stages of the ovenbird watercolor, which I may or may not continue. It's really not very inspiring at the moment. The photo also shows the maples outside my window. Unfortunately it doesn't really show how the limbs are being whipped around. And the bird feeder attached to the window is full of food but empty of birds. I bought new bird food on Friday and I don't think I've seen a bird since.

Hurricanes do odd things. Ocean birds are being reported all around, having been blown off course by Irene. And the local birds? Maybe they're just hunkered down, waiting for this wind to end.

It's been an eventful week for nature. One day the floor is moving thanks to a 5.8 earthquake. A few days later we're preparing for a hurricane and then a tropical storm. Cape May where we vacationed just 10 days ago just had an evacuation of 750,000 people. When sun and normal weather returns it will be like a visit from a barely, recognizable stranger.

After I posted this I realized I needed to try to salvage the ovenbird watercolor. This is done now. It could use more work but it's on sketch paper not watercolor paper. So it's time to leave it be and save any future versions for good watercolor paper.

Sorting Dowitchers

2011-08-23T14:27:00.000-04:00

I suppose in any field you hear a truism and assume it is true until someone tells you otherwise. I've always heard and read that Long-billed and Short-billed Dowitchers could really only be told apart by call. But shorebirds are not my area of expertise. Perhaps if I'd seen more of them I'd know this isn't true.

In any case the shorebird workshop mentioned in the last post spent a fair amount of time showing how to differentiate them. But even after all that when I saw the mystery dowitcher that I spent an hour sketching and photographing I thought it was a specific race of a Short-billed Dowitcher.

As I looked through my photos though I realized that one showed a longer, thinner bill than is often found on a Short-billed. When I looked at 'The Shorebird Guide' I found this regarding molting adult Long-billeds:

Head molt starts earlier than body molt so many late-summer birds have agray-headed, salmon-bellied look.

The Shorebird Guide, by Michael O'Brien, Richard Crossley and Kevin Karlson

The gray head with salmon wash on neck and going into belly was one of the most striking parts of this bird. That, the long bill, the rich colors of feathers, and the 'swallowed-a-grapefruit', hunched look all make me think this was a Long-billed. And I'm sure if I remembered everything from the class I could cite a couple of other reasons.

In the long run it doesn't make much difference. But for me part of the enjoyment of birding is trying to make difficult IDs like this.

One side note: hardly had I started this than our whole house shook. The cats appeared in the hallway with wide-eyed looks. Yes it felt just like one of those earthquakes I used to experience in California. And it was: a 5.8 one centered in Virginia and felt all the way to New York.

I think I wrote a few months ago about how the study of geology humbles you. And to actually feel geology is probably doubly humbling. It's so easy to think that our lives and what goes on in them, including the most idiotic headlines in sensationalist news, are what's important. Then the ground wiggles under you and you have second thoughts.

Fieldsketching Shorebirds around Cape May

2011-08-20T11:43:00.000-04:00

It's been quite awhile since we took a birding workshop. We learned to bird taking them at Pocono Center for Environmental Education about 15-20 years ago. The last we took was at least 8 years ago, a week long course on Spring Migration at Cape May Bird Observatory.

But we've been getting more and more interested in shorebirds and CMBO was offering a course, 'Shorebirds With the Man Who Wrote the Book' last week. The 'Man' is Michael O'Brien, and the book is 'The Shorebird Guide.'

We couldn't have made a better choice. Michael, along with his wife, birder and artist Louise Zemaitis, is a wonderful and extremely knowledgeable birder and teacher. At the end of our three day course we finally feel somewhat comfortable with shorebirds. More than that we both feel that we've learned how to look at them, so that we can figure out what something is when we see it.

That said almost as soon as the course was over we were faced with a bird that looked exactly like a dowitcher, more likely Short-billed than Long-billed, but behaved much more like a Pectoral Sandpiper. Last night as I looked at my guides, photos and field sketches I still wasn't sure and started to lean more towards a Long-billed Dowitcher. That's really not important though. What I think we both find so exciting is that we are now able to look at a shorebird and figure out how to decipher what we see. The sketch above includes the mystery bird below and a Common Tern above. One bonus about this week was that terns were included free. Everywhere the shorebirds were we seemed to see some terns as well. They are also pretty unfamiliar to us so I spent a lot of time sketching them.

At top are some of the first birds we saw: two American Oystercatchers, a Piping Plover, and a Long-billed Dowitcher, facing away but with his head turned 180 degrees and buried in his mantle. As you can see I spent much of my time trying to sketch and annotate diagnostic field marks of the various birds.

We did see a wealth of birds. I'm amazed that I was able to sketch so many of them during the course. Below two sketches of a distant Marbled Godwit with a Least Tern in between.

Next a very small Osprey which seemed it must be an immature, except that his plumage indicated adult. And with him a Caspian Tern, that stayed just long enough for this sketch.

Next an immature Great Blue Heron drying his wings. I skipped most herons and egrets I saw this trip but this pose was too striking to pass up.

Now some young Piping Plovers, almost invisible on the sand of Stone Harbor. One of the surprises of this part of the trip was the discovery of Loggerhead Turtle tracks, seemingly there to lay eggs. A naturalist with the group recognized them. The local naturalists said they had no knowledge of any sea turtles ever trying to lay eggs in this area. I've not yet had time to read up on them or to find out whether this is a real nest or a fake nest, which is always a possibility with Loggerheads I guess. Local naturalists are pursuing this.

Moving from sea turtles to a Ruddy Turnstone with his head stretched out looking for food, and a juvenile Western Sandpiper, complete with notes as to why this is a Western and not a Semi-palmated.

A Short-billed Dowitcher with Least Tern below.

Two of my favorite sketches: a juvenile Semi-palmated Sandpiper with bright, fresh plumage and a distant Whimbrel who raised his wings momentarily. One of the things I love about field sketching is being able to capture moments such as this. The only way to do it though I think is with constant practice. The more you sketch the better you get AND the more chances you have to see something like this. As I've said before it can easily become addictive.

And finally two White-rumped Sandpipers and a Sandwich Tern, both birds we've never seen before.

Our vacation was short, just three full days and two partial days. But it was one of the best ever. Fresh, invigorating ocean breezes, new birds, a very knowledgeable and effective teacher and many field sketches. It's hard to ask for anything more.

Those Little Blues

2011-08-13T10:13:00.000-04:00

Sometimes when I struggle with identifying an unusual bird I like to do some sort of art work that solidifies what I learned about the bird. Often though I get seduced along the way by other factors. In this case I liked the idea of showing a second Little Blue a bit further back. That meant less space for the primary bird and thus not much detail So I never really did much detail on the bill. And the greenish legs, a diagnostic characteristic, get lost a bit in the overall green of the painting.

So it has ended up being a more artistic painting than a scientific one. Still there are elements of both. And sometimes you just need to get started. With this done I wouldn't be surprised if I eventually try a few more of this subject.

Finally I like the idea of commemorating this unusual event for Philadelphia. I'm happy with that. Now I just need to do another, slightly more vibrant painting.

This painting by the way is much more satisfying than the two I did of the White Ibis at Tinicum last month. I think that's because of the effort spent in just identifying the birds. Also I never saw the birds like this. It's a composition of other real life scenes. It's almost always more exciting to try something like that.

Little Blue Seems to Win

2011-08-11T14:00:00.001-04:00

Errands brought me into the vicinity of Morris Arboretum this morning so I had to stop and take a look at the mystery heron/egret. I'd pretty much decided it was a Snowy, based mainly on the markings under the eye, the typical poses which seemed more like a Snowy and the relative rarity of Little Blues.

I took numerous photos and did some more sketches. While there I ran into some people who told me a local birder had called them immature Little Blues. I wasn't convinced.

But when I got home I did pull out one more guide to look through. This one, the Stokes, showed a photo much like what I'd seen. And seeing it again it was hard to deny that the legs were one solid color and that was more green than yellow. Also the bill does seem broader and thicker and bends down more than I think is true of the Snowy. Things that leave me with some doubts though: the markings of bill under eye seem more like Snowy, and the poses seemed more like the many Snowies I've seen than like the few Little Blues. Nonetheless I think immature Little Blue is correct.

In spite of many views of the last post I heard nothing from anyone on PA rare bird listserv with their thoughts. Perhaps with these additional photos. AND they have: a number of people have confirmed this as an immature Little Blue. Thanks to you all for your emails.

Above a sketch of an immature Great Blue Heron, which has been at Morris last couple of days.

Another sketch of the Solitary Sandpiper, an Eastern Kingbird and just the start of what I'd guess was a Willow Flycatcher. Also the Little Blue, which didn't sit still for long, and a far-off Red-bellied Woodpecker.

Finally a Green Heron, one of two I saw today, and more sketches of the immature Little Blue, which just wouldn't sit still.

Snowy Egret or Little Blue at Morris

2011-08-10T16:05:00.000-04:00

Every once in awhile I'm out birding and sketching and am not sure about the ID on a bird. Such is the case above. The pale bill is the first thing that threw me. I'm used to seeing Great Egrets at Morris and assumed that's what it was. But the color of bill and legs seemed wrong. Size is always hard to gauge without something to compare a bird to but it seemed small.

When I got home and consulted my guides it seemed almost as likely to be a juvenile Little Blue Heron as a juvenile Snow Egret primarily due to color of bill. But the actual shape of bill, and the greater rarity of a Little Blue, make me tend toward a Snowy. I've posted a query to the Audubon PA rare bird listserv and am posting the photos above so that anyone who reads that post can check these photos.

I was primarily interested in doing field sketches at Morris but I didn't get far with the two mystery egrets. Only toward the end of my visit did I realize that there were two. Most of the day I was looking at just one but it was just too far away to get a good look at in scope, and it rarely stood still. The sketch above shows it as well as a juvenile male Wood Duck and a Great Blue Heron that was scratching his head.

Below a few more field sketches. First a Solitary Sandpiper, with a bill that seemed suprisingly sharp and long, a Twelve-Spotted Skimmer and the same Great Blue Heron.

And second: a female House Sparrow, sketched at home before heading out, another 12-Spotted Skimmer, a Northern Rough-winged Swallow, a Painted Turtle in two poses, and a Great Blue Heron just after it flew over my head.

And finally another Odd and End. This is a Caran d'Ache Neocolor II crayon with wash based on some photos of Common Moorhens seen at Metzger Marsh in May, 2011.

Odds and Ends

2011-08-05T16:21:00.000-04:00

When I began this blog about 3 and a half years ago I used one of my first bird paintings as the header. Some of you may have noticed that the header has changed. And about time some might say! Three and a half years is a long time in internet time. But internet time can also be a harsh, and foolish, taskmaster. Who wants to try to keep pace with internet time? I'd rather have a life.

The first header was of a Blackburnian Warbler and so is the new one. I'm quite happy with the last reduction linocut so I wanted to showcase it. Since it's also of the same bird it seemed like a good idea to make the switch.

In a sense the two works show the beginnings and end of a journey. The early watercolor was one of my very first bird paintings. In it I think I stayed closer to abstraction than to realism. I liked the boldness of it but I also felt guilty about not knowing enough about the bird to stay true to it. Five years later I feel that I now know quite a bit about portraying birds. So the new print to me seems a happy combination of abstraction and realism. That's what I wanted when I started with birds and I think I've accomplished it.

In any case this explains the new header.

You may not have guessed it but the multi-color reduction linocut was a lot of work. I totalled up all my hours and they're almost 50. After such intense work it's nice to do something less demanding. So I've been out field sketching, taking photos and doing small studies based on both.

The small watercolor at top is a Least Sandpiper, based on field sketches and photos from Morris Arboretum last weekend. I still haven't gotten free, or accomplished, enough with watercolor for my work in it to be a successful blend of realistm and abstraction like the linocuts. But I keep working and playing at it. This is one such attempt.

Today was a cool morning for a change so I took advantage of it and took a lengthy walk along the Wissahickon Creek in Philadelphia.

Above is a field sketch of a Least Sandpiper from last weekend as well as some birds seen today: a Ruby-throated Hummingbird, Eastern Chipmunk and Red-tailed Hawk. Only the chipmunk sat still for more than a split second. The other two birds were in flight.

Above a Canada Goose from this morning, along with a Wood Duck taking off as I scared him out of water, a less shy Wood Duck preening itself and a trout in the creek.

Finally the subject of my other, very occasional blog, Feeding on Devil's Walkingstick
. These prickly shrubs are just starting to form flowers. Soon they'll bloom, then form berries, then be inundated by birds, mainly warblers and thrushes. I just wanted to do a quick sketch of one as the flowers start to form.

Finito!

2011-08-01T15:32:00.000-04:00

I've just finished the linoleum block reduction print of a Blackburnian Warbler seen at Magee Marsh in Ohio in May, 2011. This print has been an ordeal, using 8 or maybe 9 or maybe even 10 colors. But in terms of color it's pretty much what I wanted.

In terms of registration well maybe not. Without a sophisticated registration system, and perhaps even with one, a print with 8 to 10 colors might not have the best registration. Still it's probably better than your average newspaper! The difference is that I don't care all that much.

I don't want total chaos but I do like the happy accidents and forced inexactitude that many colors creates. This could easily sound like an after the fact rationalization. But it's not. I just don't like finely done art, at least not from my own hand. I can admire it in the work of others. But for myself I start shaking when I verge to close to exactness. It's just not my character.

When I was a child I read something that said Native American artists(Indians in the lingo of the time) often left a mistake in their crafts because something that was perfect was a challenge to the gods or something like that. I'm sure I'm misremembering it. But it stuck with me. Who knows whether it had any influence on my aesthetics. I doubt it. But it is funny how I think about it as I verge away from anything that is too finely done.

I'm not sure how many readers are familiar with reduction linoleum block prints. What it means is that as you print one color you carve it away from the block after printing. By the time you're done there's almost nothing left to the block. The photo above shows what's left in the final inking. I'm getting fancy here and using two colors, the final green and a new orange for the throat. The smudges on the block are where the inking brayer tilted and got ink where I didn't want it. So I rubbed that area off before printing.

The final edition of this is 12, with 4 artist's proofs. They are nearly the same as the final edition. Because of the complex registration each print is really almost unique. The paper is 9x11 inches and the image itself is 6x8. I've used Gamblin oil-based ink and hand pulled each print on Rives Heavyweight paper. Eventually one or two will go up for sale on my Etsy site.

Blackburnian Warbler Version 6

2011-07-29T11:23:00.001-04:00

Finally getting near the end here. And my guess is that I'll finish it before Congress raises the debt ceiling, if in fact it decides that's a better option than the full blown recession that seems heading our way.

Oddly enough for all the transmogrifications this print has gone through it's starting to look much as I'd planned. The vague idea is taking shape. I still plan to add a bright orange to just the throat and then replace much of the black in the foliage with green. Whether it will be a tinted green, as i'd originally planned, a medium leaf green, or a darker gray/green only time and experimentation will tell.

I do want to add that last fall I wrote a post on what I expected the November elections would bring: they would have the impact, and not a good one, of a mighty oak falling in the forest and destroying all that surrounds it. This was based on seeing just such a thing at Carpenter's Woods. That seems to be exactly what we've gotten. You get what you elect.

Where Did This Patience Come From?

2011-07-26T12:41:00.000-04:00

I've never been a patient person. But as with most people age and experience has shown me that sometimes it pays to at least try to be patient.

In art it's easy to feel like I want the results now. I want that extremely vague idea in the back of my head to immediately appear as a finished masterpiece as soon as I begin a new work. I know some people like to work more slowly and almost meditatively. There's something appealing in the process of working itself, not just in the finished result.

I understand the second camp but I'm more with the impatient artists I'd say. Still I've learned that good work generally doesn't work that way. It is like true conversation. You have to look and listen to what the work is telling you. I know this might sound hopelessly mystical and nonsensical to non-artists. But really it's no different that a major league shortstop fielding a hard hit ball in an unfamiliar ballpark. The shortstop doesn't just methodically catch the ball, knowing exactly where it will go once it leaves the batter's bat. All sorts of odd things happen along the way. You need to stay alert.

The same is true in art. You need to stay alert and sometimes you have to take a lengthy road to get to your goal.

That's the case with reduction linocuts. When I began this print I anticipated six colors, a light orange, bright orange, yellow-green, blue, black and green. A light gray and dark burgundy were also possible for small accents.

As you can imagine printing at least six colors means a lot more work. So my thought is: if I'm going to make such a complex print I might as well make a large edition, assuming of course that the end result will be successful. So that adds more work. For this print I've done about 30 proofs and 18 actual prints. Each proof and print must be properly registered so that the various colors match up. For instance I don't want the black of the limb mistakenly appearing on the white of the birds breast because of sloppy registration.

So you can probably see this is time consuming. It comes as a great surprise to me, an impatient person, that I have the patience to go along with this lengthy process.

I printed the fourth color yesterday, as seen in the photo above. I'd have to say this was sloppy thinking on my part. I was looking for a grayish white that would show the whitish breast in shadow, but I also wanted a gray for some of the more distant limbs. Instead I got a very, dark gray, far darker than I'd anticipated. BUT there was something I liked about the strong contrast it created with the other colors.

Today though I realized that it was just too untrue to the breast of the Blackburnian warbler, even in the darkest shadow. So today I mixed up a largely transparent white. I inked just the breast and printed a proof. I wasn't thrilled with that so I inked the entire linoleum block, knowing that I could always print over areas that I didn't want to be white in the finished print. That looked far worse. So finally I went with the white in just one area, as shown at top.

There's one problem with that. It looks a bit ugly. Most of this is due, I think, to the fact that it is a loosely defined area. I know however that I'm planning to print the black breast streaking of the bird in that area. My hope, is that once the black is printed the breast will also look crisp.

But now I've done five colors and I foresee at least three more: black, bright orange and some sort of green. I'll probably determine that once I print the black. This means at least three more days work.

Where in the world did I get the sort of patience that allows me to spend over a week on a print? I'm not really sure. My guess is that it's a matter of hope springing eternal. Somewhere in the back of my mind I think the results will be worth the work.

If you wonder why, though, I don't do more reduction linocuts, I think you now have your answer.

Things to Do in 100 F Weather

2011-07-23T17:09:00.000-04:00

Like much of the US we're going through some triple digit weather. Since we don't have air conditioning, and don't really want it, anywhere except the bedroom it tends to get a bit hot on days that are over 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

But this is when a basement printing setup pays off. It's always a lot cooler in the basement and that's where I do my actual printing. So I look at the print and do the carving in my blazingly hot studio on the second floor. But then when I go to print it's cool. So I've spent the last three days working on this new reduction printn

It's based on a watercolor sketch I showed back in May or so of a Blackburnian I'd seeb at Magee Marsh in early May. Reduction prints are somewhat like a leap of faith. The 'faith' is in your ability to make the whole thing work. Maybe some people can clearly plan out the 5-10 colors that might be used in a reduction cut. But not me, and not most people I'd guess. I come up with a vague plan but then I base most of my further decisions on the proofs that I pull as I go along.

This proof has gone through three colors plus the white of the paper. You can still see some of the orange that was the first color. That was followed by the light blue, then the light yellow. I still plan on 3-5 more colors and the print might dictate still more. As I go along my faith is in my ability to react to what happens and still come up with something I'm happy with.

I'd guess another 3-5 days on this print, perhaps more.

Though it seemed accurate the neck on the juvenile white ibis that I showed a week or so ago seemed a bit thick. Some recent photos by others of the same bird at John Heinz NWR in Philadelphia that I happened upon on the web also showed how the neck can seem very thick when held a certain way.

But the neck can also look slimmer. I also felt like that watercolor didn't adequately show the variation in neck color. So above is a second watercolor of same bird, this time looking slimmer and doing a better job with the neck coloration I think.

I had no plans at all to do a lino of it. But as I've been working on the new lino..............

Back in a Gallery

2011-07-18T13:50:00.000-04:00

When I first moved to Philadelphia I spent the bulk of my time making art. Making a living, paying bills, etc. was secondary. Not that I didn't pay my bills. Just that I didn't make a steady job whose primary purpose would really be to pay the bills become my top priority.

At that time I had a studio next to the not-yet-renovated Ben Franklin Hotel on Chestnut St. in Philadelphia. What time I didn't spend painting and drawing I spent doing the dirty work of trying to get my work shown. To make a long story short I spent a lot of time photographing my work, then manually masking the slides I got back so that the work itself was accentuated, then working up the nerve to walk into what I thought where the most high quality galleries in Phildelphia and asking them to give me a show.

Why was a show so important? Well at that time there was no internet. If I wanted to make a living from my art I had to have someone buy it and the primary, in fact almost the only, venue for that was commercial galleries. The other option was juried shows at various institutions and I also spent a lot of time applying to them, with about a 50% success rate. And of course there were fellowships, what I and many of my friends called 'The Lottery.'

I'm not a purist about art, though I suppose I might have started out that way. But I understood fairly early on that you had to SELL work in order to survive, and the main outlet for that was commercial galleries.

But after I'd visited most of the galleries I was interested in and having a number of them come to my studio and look at my work I still didn't have the promise of a show.

Eventually those aforementioned bills took their toll and it was either ignore them or get a full-time job. So I got a job. That cut into my time but I still made art and tried to get shows.

At some point though, as I mention on my web site, I began to doubt that I was going to be able to show in the galleries I wanted to. They continued toward 'ideational' art, where ideas, quite flimsy ideas to my mind, and verbiage replaced visual substance. So much work seemed to need a lot of 'verbal advertising' in order to get any attention. This trend was occuring in the art magazines and museums as well. And the galleries I wasn't that interested in probably wouldn't have shown me either. My style was too different from what they showed. So I basically stopped trying to show in galleries.

The only shows I have had in the last 20 years or so were at the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education where I had two shows of my insect drawings. When I changed to naturalistic art five or six years ago I was too new to it to try to find a gallery to show it.

AND, there was the internet. I've had at least one site for at least five years, and have slowly added this blog, my primary online store, and have tested out the water at etsy, mainly for my more inexpensive prints.

About 10 days ago I read in the local paper about a juried show at a neighborhood art center less than a half mile from where I live. With some trepidation I applied and was accepted.

But why go back to galleries after 20 years without them? Well for one thing it involved little effort on my part. It really was just around the corner. For another I've always liked the idea of supporting 'local' businesses, whether food coops, local art centers, community supported agricultural or whatever. So much of the world seems to have lost the values of the neighborhood, though I have to add that I long ago abandoned my home neighborhood in Illinois and have spent a lot of time living in large cities. I'm sure that this skews my perspective a bit.

A third reason was that art really needs to be seen to be truly appreciated. That's one reason Albert Barnes didn't want color reproductions of his collection. Reproduction is always lacking but gives a false sense of being accurate. I've always been a big supporter of him and his vision of his art before the local courts dismantled it. In any case there is so much more to art when you see it in person. So all in all I just couldn't pass up the chance to perhaps show at the Manayunk Roxborough Art Center.

The photo at top shows two of my recent prints that were accepted, the multi-color reduction linocut of Wood Ducks along the Wissahickon, and the most recent linocut of the Lousiana Waterthrush and Ebony Jewelwing also seen along the Wissahickon. Since so many of the people who go to the gallery should be familiar with the Wissahickon I decided to submit these two prints.

Above my wife Jerene looks at part of the exhibit last Saturday. And below a shot of the outside sitting area and fountain.

The gallery at the Manayunk Roxborough Art Center is open on weekends from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. This show runs through July, 31. If you're in the neighborhood please stop by. And be sure to look for those Wissahickon prints.

White Ibis Drops In

2011-07-16T12:08:00.001-04:00

No sooner had I written about migrant birds being gone and the residents now having their neighborhoods back for their own personal use than a southern bird, the White Ibis, was reported at Tinicum, a.k.a. John Heinz NWR. Since it was a beautiful day yseterday, though a bit hot in full sun, I decided to take the 15-mile drive and try to find and sketch it.

I don't know if I've ever experienced a more easily found life bird. And during the 60-90 minutes I sketched it the young bird never moved more than 25 feet. Above is one of the better field sketches I tried.

The watercolor at top is based on a photo I took, coupled with my memory of the bird. When you spend 60 minutes sketching you do tend to develop solid visual memories. One of those memories is the beautiful streaking on the neck, a combination of ochres, browns and whites, much like a shorebird. Unfortunately many of the photos showed the bird in shadow, so they don't really show the subtle coloring on the neck.

This streaking by the way, along with other clues, indicate that this is a juvenile bird. Breeding adults are bright white. Since I'd never seen one before I was looking for a white bird. But once you've seen the curved bill of an ibis it's easy to spot one regardless of color.

Above are my first sketches. I think they got better as I got more familiar with the birds. Another birder told me that this bird was a post-breeding wanderer. When I checked my guidebooks when I got home they also mentioned that White Ibis are known for this. So this bird is not a northern migrant heading back south. Instead he's more like a youthful explorer. You know youth!

So it seems aside from him the breeding birds still have their neightborhood to themselves right? Well not quite. I also saw at least 65 Least Sandpipers at Tinicum. Another birder, who leads walks there, told me that these were males heading back south. I've read about how early fall migration begins. But this is the first time I've ever personally been hit over the head with it. But I can't complain. A lump on the head is well worth the price to see so many beautiful birds, especially when you know their story and their lengthy migration. It just makes the natural world seem all the more amazing.

I took photos but had no time to sketch. Hopefully I'll soon get back out to sketch or will try a painting based on the new photos as well as some from Ottawa NWR in May when they were heading north.

Tourists Have Finally Left

2011-07-14T18:04:00.000-04:00

Anyone who has lived in a tourist town or a touristy section of town, as I once did in San Francisco, knows the odd feeling of your neighborhood not really belonging to you. There are all these strangers there, acting like it is THEIR neighborhood.

I had to think of that today while briefly birding and sketching at Carpenter's Woods. Most of the migrants have been gone for a month or so, breeding somewhere farther north. And at least at Carpenter's Woods, the tourist birders are gone as well. They can be numerous in late spring but are almost nonexistent now.

Whether that makes the breeding birds more normal I don't know. But it seems to. That is the feeling I have as I walk through the local places that I bird.

For instance the Acadian Flycatcher, shown in a new watercolor sketch above, sometimes seems like the most numerous bird at the Wissahickon. They're still hard to see as they tend to be at least 15 feet up, fairly well hidden in dense foliage. But I generally get a glimpse of one or two on each walk.

That's one at top left in the field sketches above. It's not really all that successful and doesn't look much different than the many other sketches I've done of it this summer. So while this recent viewing was fresh in my mind I decided to do a watercolor sketch from some older photos I'd taken. My thought was that doing something more developed might coalesce all the tidbits of knowledge I had picked up in all my recent sightings. Hopefully it will. The only other solution I can think of is to just camp out in their vicinity and keep sketching each time they make their 15 second appearance until I have them down.

The tourist season analogy hit me today as a Carolina Wren seemed to scold me for a 5-10 minutes. It took me awhile to realize he was right in front of me, only six feet away, rather than 12-15. The sketch above tries to capture the way he stood with legs splayed, stretched tall as could be, head almost straight in the air, calling out loudly. What was oddest though was how he would switch from facing right to facing left as he did this. Each time he made this quick movement he struck a new dramatic pose. Like the Acadian I'm not happy with the sketch. I also took a couple photos. I might trying to use this sketch and the photos to try to capture this striking event in watercolor.

Regardless of the sketch though the actual experience got me to thinking that I was now in the real world of birds. Perhaps he was warning off a mate on eggs, or with young. In either case it seemed like I'd intruded in the daily life of my local birds.

That's not quite as exciting as glimpsing the brilliant neo-tropical migrants on their short trips through. But it is very satisfying and not at all to be missed. There's nothing like knowing the natural order of the place in which you live.

Oh yes. A field sketch of some low-hanging White Oak leaves. I'm determined to spend more time on this. No more leaf torture remember?

Numerous Are The Tortures

2011-07-12T13:59:00.000-04:00

'Leaves have been subjected to more bad treatment by the draughtsman than perhaps any other portion of the vegetable kingdom. They have been represented, or misrepresented, in all sorts of impossible positions. Numerous are the tortures to which they have been subjected...'

Walter Hood Fitch writing in The Gardener's Chronicle in 1869 as quoted in How to Draw Plants by Keith West

As I drew and painted this yellow lady's slipper the last few days there was something that bothered me. I'd never done any sketches of the plant when I saw it. This watercolor is based on some photos I took. But there were many plants all in same photo. How could I tell I was drawing just the part of one plant?

I know enough about plants, just my visual impression of them if nothing else, to have been somewhat worried about the five petals. Often parts are paired in flowers, though certainly not always. As I read the quote above this morning I got even more scared that I might be wrong in my portrayal. To confirm it I saw that a few pages further on in How to Draw Plants was an illustration of a Lady's Slipper with just four petals. So then I checked Lawrence Newcomb's Newcomb's Wildflower Guide. Same thing. I'd made a mistake.

I learned early on in my bird painting how absolutely confusing photos were, even ones I'd taken myself. Often there was a situation just like this where the photo showed something that looked like a part of the bird. But was it really? I didn't know enough about the structure of birds to say for sure. It was a similar uncertainty about flowers that was in the back of my mind about the Lady's Slipper. I should have pursued this further before starting the painting.

For me art is always more important than accuracy. Keith West's book is aimed at people who want to do botanical illustration and exactitude and faithfulness to what is seen is stressed. I have no argument with this. It's just not my way.

On the other hand I don't want to turn some viewers away from my artistically-focused work on their first glance because something is so obviously wrong. So I try to get things right but just not be limited by them.

In this case though I just couldn't leave that aberrant petal on right of stem. It's been rubbed out and replaced by white gouache.

Now as for the tortured leaves I'm sure that Walter Hood Fitch is absolutely correct. And I'm one of the criminal torturers. That's what I realized the other day and the reason I'm doing more vegetation studies and reading up on portraying plants. Hopefully I'll soon be less of a Leaf-Torturer

History Always Throws Me

2011-07-11T14:46:00.000-04:00

I don't know what it says about me or my sense of history that everytime I read something that some historical figure said that rings true to me I'm shocked. As much as I respect history, the great classics, the 'examined life', etc., I'm always a bit shocked when I read something from years or often centuries ago that rings absolutely true today. And it's always a pleasant experience, as though confirming that yes the world does make sense.

Collinson wrote in one letter..."and don't escape" the lady's slipper orchid, his favourite plant. A yellow one already flourished in his garden at Peckham, but he wanted a variety because the sculptural blossom "makes my mouth Water"

British gardener Peter Collinson writing to Philadelphian John Bartram asking for some American plants in the 18th century as quoted by Andrea Wulf in 'The Brother Gardeners'

The line about the sculptural blossom of the Lady's Slipper making Collinson's mouth water really hit home. There is something that just begs to be painted, or perhaps sculpted in Yellow Ladies Slippers or pink Moccasin Flowers. Every time I see them, which isn't often and I think only in Shenandoah National Park I'm stunned by them. But reading this same reaction from 300 years ago was equally stunning, probably like discovering that your parents were once young do and thought and acted much like you.

Ever since I read this passage a week or so ago I've had it in the back of my mind to comment on it and the book 'The Brother Gardeners' in this blog.

I think what may have pushed me over the edge and made me take up some plant subjects was this failed watercolor of a Tri-colored Heron. It's based on some photos I took at Metzger Marsh in Ohio last May. In marshy areas there are often reeds just about everywhere. So if you paint a bird in the marshes you'll most often have to deal with reeds in one way or another.

I think the reed problem is particularly difficult in watercolor. The reason is that reeds, or at least the parts of them in sun, are pretty bright, often the brightest and lightest part of the picture. They often overlap the darker primary subject, in this case the heron. In oil you can go light over dark. So it would be possible to paint the darker subject first then paint over it with lighter paints where the reeds cross the main subject. That just won't work with watercolor. You can't work light over dark.

And yet if you draw in all of the reeds, something too finicky for my tastes, thinking that you'll use light colors there after you've painted in the darker subject you still have a problem. Unless you paint very carefully, probably with a small brush, it's hard to paint in the main subject in the little sections between the reeds. All sense of a fluid wash disappears. You get patchwork painting. I'm sure some people can do this and others use some sort of masking to protect the light areas while painting in the dark areas. But I've never been able to picture myself doing this. It also seems too finicky for me.

So what's left? I keep thinking that I can somehow abstract the reeds and put them on after the main subject, perhaps leaving just a few blank areas on the heron where I'll put the abstracted reeds. That philosophy applied on this painting ended up with me just abandoning the painting!

But it did make me think I just need to learn to paint vegetation better. I may need to go through some painful times trying to do some fairly accurate paintings of flowers, vegetation, trees.

Between this experience and the Collinson quote I decided it was time to paint a Yellow Lady's Slipper.

Above is my first attempt. Well as you can see I got so involved with the leaves of the orchid that you can barely make out the orchid. I tried to beat this painting into submission but eventually had to abandon it as well.

When I was done I told myself that I just needed to try some more realistic versions of the orchid, and maybe other plants, where they were the undisputed focus of the painting. That is the painting at top of blog. Yesterday it looked so dead I thought I'd also need to abandon it. But more work today got me to the point of half liking it.

I'm not sure how much I learned. Most of the vegetation I'll see while birding won't be Lady's Slippers. But it is a start and it forced me to pull out my old photographs and take a look.

Finally I'd like to recommend 'The Brother Gardeners'. Given all the petty nonsense that passes for news today, and I'm particularly thinking of one political party when I say that, it's nice to read that Americans, and the British, once had far nobler goals and interests. I've not read Andrea Wulf's new book, 'Founding Gardeners', but I did see her give a talk on it. It was hard to fathom a time when polticians, American politicians no less, were as interested in their gardens as in anything else. How often have you heard politicians discuss gardening over the last 10 years. We seem to have become a greatly diminished country, one in which whatever party or pseudo-party that can sink the lowest seems to win. Maybe all members of congress should be forced to work their own garden plots out on the White House lawn one hour a day. There's a pleasant thought about re-grounding politics and ought to be effective in stamping out some of the nonsense that is currently wafting about.

Birds with Open Mouths

2011-07-04T14:41:00.000-04:00

Nature sometimes surprises you. That I think is one of the virtues of taking the time, or maybe having the luxury of the time, to pay attention to it. Yesterday we took a three hour walk along the Manayunk Canal which borders the Schuylkill River not far from where we live.

It was almost exactly a year ago that I was shocked to find an immature Yellow-crowned Night Heron there. It's hard enough to find mature Yellow-crowned Night Herons in Philadelphia, let alone immature ones. Was it the child of local Yellow-crowneds? Was it a wayward youngster from elsewhere? I don't know and yesterday's walk didn't turn up another.

But we did see at least one Great Blue Heron with his mouth wide open, tongue sticking out and cheeks moving in and out very quickly. In other words it was panting. I wouldn't be surprised to see this on a day in the 90s. But it was only about 80 when we saw this numerous times. I assume it was the same heron at various parts of the canal but it's hard to say for sure.

In any case it was striking and led to some further investigation when I got home. This behavior I guess is not all that uncommon in herons. It just seemed odd given the temperatures.

At one point he was high atop a 10-12 foot shrub. I did a sketch and also took some photos. The small watercolor above is based on both. The photo turned out a bit darker than the actual watercolor.

A few days ago I was walking along the Wissahickon hoping to find at least one of the two Louisiana Waterthrushes that I'd seen in mid-June. No such luck. But I did get some good looks at a couple of Northern Rough-winged Swallows. I did field sketches of them and also took some photos.

Since I've seen so many, especially immature ones, and done field sketches of them I wanted to do a watercolor sketch. I'd also taken some photos and looked at them as well. I was quite surprised to find one immature with his mouth wide open. Was he yawning, begging as young birds often do, about to snap his mouth shut on a flying insect? I don't know. The photo also indicated that the nictitating membrane was partially covering the eye.

This presented a problem. Should I paint something I'd never actually noticed when I looked at the bird with my naked eye? Because I need practice portraying birds with their bills open I decided to do so. There is a huge gape in most birds, much bigger than you'd expect by just looking at the bill.

So inadvertently my last two watercolor sketches have been of birds with open mouths. There's no secret meaning here, just a recording of an odd natural coincidence. But it is a happy one and indicative of why I never get bored on my walks or in my art.

Evolution of a Picture/Print

2011-06-29T11:53:00.000-04:00

A few days ago I showed the initial stages of my print of the Louisiana Waterthrush and Ebony Jewelwing at the Wissahickon. At end of this post I'll show the finished print.

For now though I'd like to show what came before the initial stages of the print. That was of course the charcoal drawing that I also showed earlier. But it too had its own origins. Some of them are at top where I show two pages from different sketchbooks.

Both pages are all fieldsketches. The one on the left is over a year old. The main subject is a Red-bellied Woodpecker falling off a tree, along with a large piece of bark, done from memory. Obviously it happened too quickly for me to sketch it as it happened. There's also an overworked sketch of an Acadian Flycatcher. But I didn't even remember doing the dragonfly. Only the stigmas indicate to me that this is most likely another female Ebony Jewelwing.

The page on right is from a few weeks ago and shows a quick sketch of the Louisiana Waterthrush and the Bbony Jewelwing along with some poorly drawn other birds.

None of these are anything to write home about. But I think they show the value of a sketchbook in developing paintings and prints.

The quick watercolor above is also one that I posted here earlier. It's done using Caran d'Ache Neocolor II crayons and is based on the field sketch at top as well as my visual memory. As you can see there is more of a diagonal to the pose than in the fieldsketch. But that is how I remembered it. This waterthrush seems to always have his behind up in the air, pumping all the time. So I wanted to capture that and I think I did a better job here than in the original fieldsketch. I did see the same bird once or twice after the field sketch and he was again in the same pose.

What's interesting to me about this though is that I used this pose, as well as the made up rocks and water, which only approximate what I saw, as the basis for the charcoal drawing and finally the new print.

Some people may wonder why in the world I'm beating this waterthrush/damselfy/horse to death. Mainly because I loved reading about artistic process when I was young and still do.

The other reason is that I feel like I'm finally accomplishing what I set out to do when I started using birds as subjects in 2006: create ambitious works that included them as subjects. The combination of fieldwork, artistic creativity in designing the final composition, and then cutting the lino all add up, at least to me, to something that matches my ambition for what art should do. As an added benefit, and one I never had as an abstract artist, it allows me to portray the natural world that I love.

Above is the final edition. This is print number 4 of 10. There are also two artists proofs.

Jewelwing Just about Done

2011-06-26T18:47:00.000-04:00

It was a beautiful morning for field sketching but late this afternoon I found some time to return to the Louisiana Waterthrush/Ebony Jewelwing linocut. Above is version 15. I'm nearing the end. Most likely a few more tweaks then on to an edition on good paper.

The current proofs are on cheap printer paper so the ink doesn't always look as good as it will on the final printmaking paper. I'm still deciding which paper to use for it.

Waterthrush Linocut - WIP

2011-06-24T17:40:00.000-04:00

As threatened I began a new linoleum block print today based on the charcoal and pastel drawing of Louisiana Waterthrush and Ebony Jewelwing that I showed in last post. The photo above shows the block itself after printing the first six versions. It's sitting on a homemade bench hook with some of my carving tools next to it.

I decided some reader(s) might be interested in seeing much of the process involved so I decided to document it here. The first thing I did was to edit the last photo of the finished charcoal so that it was reversed horizontally. I need to do this because the lino prints in reverse. So I need to reverse my template if I want it to come out correctly. After that I crop the photo so that it is the same proportion as my linoleum block. The drawing and block were almost identical in proportion but not quite. After that I change the image size to the same size as the block and then I print it.

At that point it's time to tape the tracing paper to the linoleum block as above.

Then, as above, I tape the printed photo to the block, on top of the tracing paper.

Then I trace the lines of the major shapes in the photo.

So now it's finally time to carve. I like bold prints. But I start out very tentatively, making fairly faint lines. I do this because I can always carve deeper lines but I can never get back the linoleum once it's carved away.

It's no great surprise that the first print I pull is a disappointment, like the one above. But I'm prepared for this. It happens every time. I suppose it is a type of delayed gratification. I know that I need to be tentative to start and live with the disappointing prints.

By the time I get to version three, above, the print is starting to take shape. There is enough there for me to react to it and to make plans as to how to move on.

Version six, probably the last version for today, is above. It's organizing itself pretty well but I will still need to make some major decisions. How much black will I leave, how much white, how much of some in-between tone and just how will I achieve it using just black ink?

Stayed tuned.

Louisiana Waterthrush, Ebony Jewelwing at Wissahickon

2011-06-23T13:43:00.001-04:00

I guess I'm all colored out. First the dull brown Common Nighthawk, now this black and white charcoal and pastel of a Louisiana Waterthrush and Ebony Jewelwing seen along the Wissahickon in Philadelphia recently.

Actually the motivation was more that I've been thinking about a new linocut and exploring various compositions. Though I have done multicolor reduction linocuts it's a whole lot easier to stick to just one color. Since I've seen both Louisiana Waterthrushes and Ebony Jewelwing damselflies at the same spot on the Wissahickon recently a composition featuring both of them has been knocking around in the back of my mind.

Rather than go directly to linoleum block with this I thought I'd enjoy trying it first in charcoal. This used to be my primary medium, both as an abstract artist and for awhile as a wildlife artist. So it seemed like it might be a good idea to return to it for awhile.

The only problem is that I've finally used up all of my erasers that were able to erase right through compressed charcoal back down to the white of the paper. And I haven't been able to find them anywhere. So here in order to get back some white I added white pastel. As you may notice it has a bluish cast that is different from the warm ivory of the paper. But that's the way it is. Artists are good at adapting.

Once you decide that you're going to use birds as a subject in art you have another important decision. What do you do with the background? This is something I've struggled with since I began. The main options seem to be: 1. standalone portrait, with no real background; 2. portrait with impressionistic background, just enough to indicate some sort of believable environment; 3. painterly style, where the brushwork unites the bird and background, but there is no recognizable natural background; 4. photorealist background where everything, bird and environment is done in detail like a photo; 5. naturalistic background, where the background is recongnizable but it doesn't at all look like a photo as in much 19th century wildlife art.

There are all sorts of variations on this. A great personal discovery for me was bird and flower painting. Not exactly realistic but certainly naturalistic this style also has the very appealing trait of combining bird and environment. I'm not claiming at all that this new charcoal is in that tradition. But I think it does share a kinship with it in placing importance on bird and environment.

In fact that's why I've often added butterflies, dragonflies and damselflies, as well as turtles to my bird paintings. They are often right there in the same environment. Including them is both true to nature and allows for a lot of compositional experimentation. I don't have the time to check right now but my recollection of Audubon is that this is also something that he often did.

For someone who knows nature I hope it adds to the enjoyment of the work. For someone who doesn't I hope that the compositional complexity adds to the enjoyment of the work. For me it does both.

The Goat-sucker Coincidence

2011-06-21T17:57:00.001-04:00

I confess that I do enjoy making up provocative titles for my posts. 'The Goat-sucker Coincidence' sounds to me like the 10th sequel to an already overly drawn out series of spy thrillers. And of course it's hard to resist 'goat-sucker.'

In fact that's the reason I'm writing this post. I've been reading 'The Life of Birds' by David Attenborough for the first time. He mentions that the Nightjar family, which includes the Common Nighthawk above, often associate with cattle. They do so particularly at night

"and do so with such regularity that country folk once believed that the birds were seeking to take their animals' milk and accordingly gave them the wholly inaccurate alternative name of goat-sucker."

I had often wondered as I looked through my bird guides why there was a family of birds called 'goat-suckers'. Now I know.

After I'd read this the other day I remembered that, coincidentally!, I'd gotten a couple of decent photos of a Common Nighthawk at Magee Marsh last May. After painting so many of the colorful wood warblers it might be a nice change of pace to do a quick sketch of the cryptic brown form of this bird.

My feeling about watercolor is I'd guess similar to what some people might have about ice-skating. It can be the most graceful and beautiful medium in the world. Or it can be a colossal flop, no pun intended. The only way to get good with watercolor I believe is to keep at it, especially as a sketching tool.

Precise but lifeless watercolors seem like just that: lifeless. I prefer watercolors with fluid brushstrokes, like Winslow Homer or so much Asian brush painting. So sketches like this give me a chance to practice, to try to become adept and fluid with watercolor and the watercolor brush.

The next time I try a more finished watercolor all the fluidity might well disappear. But there's only one way to prevent that: keep practicing. So this seemed like a good excuse.

And also a good excuse for one of my favorite titles: The Goat-sucker Coincidence.

More Magee Warblers

2011-06-17T17:40:00.000-04:00

I've been continuing to do small watercolor studies of some of the warblers we saw at and around Magee Marsh NWR during The Biggest Week in American Birding. I was looking through some of the photos I took and noticed one where you really couldn't see all that much of the orange of the Blackburnian. There was also a bit of orange in some of the surrounding foliage. So I decided to do a small watercolor based on that.

We also saw a number of Prothonotary warblers. I got one field sketch and a number of photos. One thing we both noticed in viewing them is that sometimes the yellow of the head and chest almost looked orange, almost as orange as a female Blackburnian. That's what I've emphasized here. We also got some good looks from above. That shows the extremely beautiful gradation of olive green on the back as well as the black and blue of the wings. So there may still be another watercolor showing that. There's also a nesting Prothonotary about 20 miles from here so I may make an attempt to get out and see and sketch him soon.

As I said these are just sketches. They're also on the Stillman and Birn Gamma sketchbook paper that I mentioned earlier. It's not made for extensive washes. And it does buckle with that much water. But it's amazing how much paint it will still take. It's really a great paper for watercolor studies like this.

I do want to do some more ambitious work with warblers. Pastels, larger watercolors, prints? I'm not sure which. But I'm working my way in that direction.

Discreetly Tooting My Own Horn

2011-06-12T09:52:00.001-04:00

Well if you coughed up your coffee or tea while reading the subject line I don't blame you. It seems like a bit of an oxymoron. Let me just say that I'm tooting with the horn of the Red-breasted Nuthatch, not the White-breasted Nuthatch. Hopefully the tooting sounds like it's coming from a toy trumpet not a real one.

Early this year I read about the 'BBC Wildlife Artist of the Year' competition. A number of my online artists friends have won awards there. So I thought, why not? I applied in the International Artists Category. In early May while at Magee Marsh seeing all those warblers I checked my email and found that my linocut 'Belted Kingfisher, Painted Turtles, Snow' above was a finalist. What a nice surprise in an already eventful week! Unfortunately I never got the second email that said I'd won. Winners will be announced soon but I'm sure my name will not be among them. Still it's an honor to reach the finalist stage.

I'd decided to add something about it to my blog profile today so checked the web site. What a treat for all nature and art lovers to find this gallery of artwork done by artists on the island of Sark in association with The Artists for Nature Foundation.

Over the years here I've mentioned my difficulty with 'wildlife art'. So much of it seems stilted or stale. It never reflects the liveliness of nature itself. But that's rarely the case with any of the art I've seen that's done on a ANF trip. It always reminds me of why and how art based on nature can be just as exciting as that done by any artist using any other subject or technique.

So I really enjoyed going through the slideshow at the BBC link above. I think it shows some very good art based on nature, in a variety of styles. If you explore a bit you'll find other links about Sark, BBC Wildlife magazine itself, Artists for Nature Foundation and a photo of artists on bicycles. Doesn't that sound appealing?!

Hopefully this digression in praise of the gallery will allow me to qualify my tooting as discreet.

The Other Thrushes

2011-06-11T14:53:00.000-04:00

I've finished my fairly detailed sketches of local thrushes. A Hermit Thrush, seen amidst Gill-Over-the-Ground in our backyard this spring. And below a Wood Thrush, seen at Carpenter's Woods a few years ago. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of Wood Thrush on the ground so I had to use this photo instead. It would have been nice to show all the local thrushes on the ground.

Of these four thrushes only the Wood Thrush and the Veery are likely to be found in Philadelphia at this time of the year. But the Hermit, and possibly the Swainson's as well, can be found in more northern parts of the state.

Part of my reason for doing this was the hope of familiarizing myself with the various thrush species so that when I find them while birding I'll be able to do better field sketches. Of course I'm not sure at all if such a theory holds true. My guess is that more likely I just learn a little better how to copy a photo.

It made no difference today though. My wife and I took part in the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education Breeding Bird Survey, something we've done for years. But we didn't see a single thrush, only hearing one or two Veeries.

I'm sure I'll be seeing both Veeries and Wood Thrush soon at the Wissahickon soon though.

Drawing Thrushes; Testing Sketchbooks

2011-06-09T17:40:00.000-04:00

Now that most of the migrant birds have passed through and only breeding birds remain it's time to continue to improve my skill in drawings some of our natives, old friends like the thrushes and the flycatchers.

This time of year there is a tremendous amount of foliage on the trees and shrubs. If I go out walking early in the morning I'll hear all sorts of Wood Thrushes, Veeries, Acadian Flycatchers and Eastern Wood Pewees. But seeing them is another story.

If I do see them I know that most likely it will be for a very short time. So I sometimes get the bright idea that if I also do some drawings of these species from my photos I might have an easier time with quick field sketches. I really don't know if this works in practice at all.

I had another reason for trying some drawings from photos today though. I briefly mentioned my new Gamma series sketchbook from Stillman & Birn in my last post. Michael from that company left a comment. But I really haven't used the sketchbooks as much as I'd like. So today seemed like a good time to try some pencil drawings in the sketchbook.

I also wanted to test another product that I haven't used as much as I'd like: a Caran d'Ache fixpencil. This one is the smaller 2 mm. one.

I normally don't work this way, trying to copy what I see in front of me in the photo, filtered by experience of the actual bird. An example of this is a shadow on a bird in a photo. Tim Wootton gives a good example of this in his new book. The photo shows a line on the face of a bird. But experience tells you there is no such line. It's just a shadow. Sometimes it's easy to get seduced by the trancelike copying of the photo. You always need to keep your wits about you!

In any case two of the drawings are above: a Veery seen at Shenandoah National Park 4 years ago, and a Swainson's Thrush seen at Magee Marsh just a month ago. I hope that these drawings will help me with quick field sketches of thrushes next time I see them in the field. Only time will tell.

But what about the new sketchbook? Well I have to say I'm impressed, especially for this type of drawing. I did all sorts of erasing and yet you can hardly tell. It's a pleasant surface to work on. And it's nice to be able to erase and still have a clean, almost pristine surface. My previous sketches on it have been mainly quick sketches that were then covered with watercolor washes. This isn't really what the Gamma series of paper is designed for. But it did take a good number of washes without problem, just buckling some. My guess is that I need a different series for using washes like this. But for straight pencil, especially this type, where there might be a lot of erasing I was really impressed.

And I was also impressed with the way my new fixpencil worked. It's about out of lead though so my next adventure will be seeing if I can figure out how to change it. I already broke off the eraser accidentally when trying to access the lead when I first got it. Who ever thought a pencil could be so complicated? I do like the way it makes marks though and the hefty feel can't be beat.

I've rarely spent time doing product reviews on my blog. But when I do try new products it seems only fair to both companies and readers to at least say what my experience has been.

Sketching Birds with Long Pink Legs

2011-06-07T15:19:00.000-04:00

I realize that when I put 'long legs' in the title of a post that I'll probably draw some readers who are expecting something other than birds. But I'm doing so because the first thing I thought when seeing the two birds pictured above this morning was: they have long, pink legs.

Above are the actual field sketches from this morning at the Wissahickon. Included are the two birds with long, pink legs, a Louisiana Waterthrush and a Veery, as well as an Acadian Flycatcher, a bird in flight that might be a Baltimore Oriole and a skipper butterfly, most likely a Fiery or Zabulon Skipper.

The more I bird, and sketch, the more I realize that the legs, where they're placed on the torso, and the way that they're held have a lot to do with identifying birds. Often birds take typical postures. And often they have noticeable legs. Not all that many have long, pink legs.

But here they both do. And yet how different they are. The waterthrush always has bent legs, rump almost straight up in the air, head pointed down. In contrast the Veery, and some other thrushes, seems to use his legs to stand taller and straighter. The pose I drew almost looks wrong, like a Veery that's been stretched out. But that's exactly what he was doing, possibly alert for danger.

In any case after I'd done the second field sketch of the Veery I knew I'd like to do a post, and perhaps paintings, that talked about legs on birds. So the watercolors at top are both based mainly on the field sketches I did today. I also looked at some of my photos but ended up sticking with the sketches because they were truer to what I actually saw. They're done on paper from Stillman & Birn, in their Gamma series sketchbook.

I succumbed to some advertising on what good sketchbooks they made and bought one. This one really isn't meant for washes but it will hold up to light ones. For that purpose I'm happy with the sketchbooks. The paper is a bit higher quality than what I normally use for sketches and that was the reason I decided to try one of their sketchbooks. I prefer to sketch on good paper if I can afford it. So far I'm happy with this sketchbook but still need to test it a bit more.

I went back into my Kildeer and Wood Ducklings watercolor yesterday. It was the same day I received a new tube of white gouache. Well I got carried away with it. I don't like to use gouache because it's so easy to turn a transparent watercolor into a more opaque watercolor something more like acrylic or oil. But that's what happened yesterday. There's nothing wrong with gouache and many a justly famous artist has used it in their watercolors. Sometimes it's the only way to save a painting. But I still long to be a master of transparent watercolor! The way that transparent watercolor captures the sense of light, when masterfully used, just can't be beat.

Building Another Watercolor

2011-06-05T15:02:00.000-04:00

This is an unfinished watercolor, about 11x15 inches on Arches cold press paper. It's based on fieldsketches, shown below, that I did at Morris Arboretum yesterday. As I was drawing the kildeer through my spotting scope, a number of very young Wood Duck ducklings paddled by behind him. So eventually I also sketched them.

As soon as I saw the ducklings I knew I'd like to combine them with the kildeer in one painting. That's one of the pleasures of sketching in the field I think. You're always seeing something that strikes you. All you need is the courage to try to put it down on canvas.

Of course skill is needed as well. But in some ways I think it's the courage to even try that is more important. I don't want this to be another art-related post but I do just want to point out how different this process is from the one I used as an abstract artist. Finding a subject was hard work. That is not at all the case with working from nature. There's always something there.

I also did a quick pencil sketch yesterday which was my first attempt at combining the ducklings and kildeer.it is below. Obviously I also added some watercolor.

It reminds me of the quick 15 minute watercolors I used to do. Like those it's a good way to try out ideas for a larger more finished work.

I'm not sure how much more work I'll do on the work at top. I'm sure that there will be some, probably trying to unify the colors and values a bit more.

Waxing Philosophic about Birds and Geology

2011-06-02T16:22:00.000-04:00

One downside of taking a vacation is that when you return home the rhythm of the natural world, if not other worlds as well, is off kilter. We left for Ohio in mid-spring. When we returned various obligations, tropical heat and rain kept me out of the field. When I finally returned to birding today something was wrong.

The spring migration was missing. Where were the migrants? I'm still in migrant bird mode, not breeding bird mode, searching trees and shrubs hopelessly for migrant warblers. All I could find were a few breeding birds.

One of them included the mystery bird at top. What is it? What in the world is it doing? I quickly realized that it was a Wood Thrush, drying itself on a log. It lay flat, wings hanging out and down the side of the log, the tail flattened against it as well. Its torso looked far too short and its head to0 peaked. But I think this can be attributed to the fact that it was wet(thus the punky hair) and it was lying flat. So what normally looks like a long, sleek bird looked small and round.

This reminded me though of one of the pleasures of birding with breeding birds. If you have the patience to just see what is happening there are a lot of surprises, particularly birds calmly going about their business. My guess is that the late hour of day(noon) and dearth of birders had put the birds less on guard. Carpenter's Woods had become theirs again.

In any case it reminded me of one of the things that I do enjoy about birding in the summer. You get to become more acquainted with your local breeding birds.

As far as the sketch here well it's a far cry from the last one of the Black-throated Green Warbler. That was based largely on some photos I took. I'm always bothered by that, like I'm cheating, though that's not really the case. In today's case I assumed that the thrush wouldn't stay that way long. I feared that every time I raised up my binoculars to take another look before committing a line to paper that the thrush might move. As I held my sketchbook in one hand as well that meant each time I raised my binoculars to my eyes I also raised my sketchbook. Much too much flapping movement not to spook birds.

But I did get a cartoonish sketch that at least captured the moment. This is another sketch, in pencil and Caran d'Ache Neocolor II crayon and wash, that is based on the field sketch. There was no reason to use the crayons other than to continue to experiment with them.

With such an odd pose, that doesn't look believable even when it's right in front of your eyes, there's a temptation to think it would have been good to have a camera and take a photo. But my experience is that it's better to get a quick, even if cartoonish, sketch based on direct reaction to what I saw than to get a photo which might be even harder to puzzle out. At least in drawing it live I have to puzzle out what I'm actually seeing. So I'm happy that I stuck with a field sketch for this.

There's a lot to be desired but I think it does capture the moment, at least for me.

So what about philosophy and geology? Well ever since I read the cover story in the new 'The Economist' I wanted to respond in some way.

Breeding bird behavior sort of led into the article. One of the pleasures of learning about breeding birds is that you feel that you're adding to your knowledge of the natural world, a world that is larger and often more profound than the day to day human world, certainly the human world that is evident in news headlines. Knowledge of the natural world gives an interesting perspective on quotidian concerns.

This is especially true when it comes to geology. It covers such a huge time span that most human activity seems insignificant in the face of it. We tend to forget ice ages, extinctions, continent dispersal and realignment. No one, well almost no one, is worried about the North American continent splitting up and how that might effect government entitlements. We think on a much smaller time scale. Geologic scale and time is nearly incomprehensible to humans.

But there is something comforting about it. As with nature in general there is the realization, at least for me, that the world is much larger than the one I spend my daily life in. Man himself has been around for a very, very short time.

And that's what's so interesting, and scary I think, about this article on a new geological age, the Anthropocene. Since I've never studied geology formally and don't hang around college science departments I'm not familiar with just how seriously people take the idea of a new geologic age. I'd never heard of it before reading this article. As the article says:

Humans have become a force of nature reshaping the planet on a geological scale—but at a far-faster-than-geological speed.

So some theorize that the new geologic age is one in which the predominant factor is man himself. That is scary and it does, at least to me, question the nature of 'nature.' Man has long had a history of subduing nature. And at this point in history it's hard to objectively separate out the good from the bad and come up with an honest assessment. I dislike much of the destruction of nature that I see. But I also recognize that there has been progress. But it's never been on such a scale.

The article mentions a tar sand mine that physically moves twice the amount of sediment moved by all the world's rivers in a year. Do I really want someone I don't know, who is most probably more interested in profits for himself than anything else, to be messing with the earth at such a level? Not exactly.

The authors are much more sanguine about this and seem to think there's no way around it anyway, given the increase in human population. These are all very large questions. I don't have the answer. But I think the article is worth reading and thinking about.

The nature of nature seems to be changing and no one's in charge.

Time to Paint Another Warbler

2011-05-30T12:59:00.000-04:00

A few posts back I mentioned that it was 'Time to Paint a Warbler'. That was after numerous field sketches. This weekend, when it's really too hot and uncomfortable to do much outside, it seems like the right time to renew my attempts at warbler paintings.

I'll confess I don't like most warbler paintings I see. They either slavishly copy a photograph, having all the excitement of a photograph slavishly copied, do a fair job of creating a lively portrait of a warbler but then have no idea what to do with the background, if there even is one, or more likely do a watercolor, mainly in light washes, that looks like a pale imitation of what is really a brilliantly colored wood warbler.

Every once in a while, when I have such a dilemma, I'll pull out my baby elephant reproduction version of Audubon's prints of American birds. Rarely am I disappointed. But yesterday I was. From what I can tell Audubon didn't use as much the artistic imagination and adventurousness that he uses in many of his plates in these. Almost all are perched on what I surmise is relevant foliage. Perhaps if I look on another day my view will change and I'll see his typical artistry. In any case they weren't much help yesterday.

Finally I decided to do something similar to many warbler renderings: paint a warbler among relevant foliage. Mine is tightly cropped however rather than showing more of the foliage as in Audubon and others. I would prefer to avoid this tight cropping because it often looks too much like something just copied from a photo. But I also wanted to accentuate the bird, and it was done more from one of my recent photos than from my field sketches. The watercolor above is a small one, about 5x9 inches. on watercolor paper.

I've recently been rereading two books by artist Bruce Pearson, 'An Artist on Migration', and 'Birdscape.' I think it's in the latter that he says an artist doesn't try to portray what he sees. Instead he portrays 'what he wants you to see.'
The difference is that he wants to create the same sense of passion in the viewer that he has as he views, and paints, the bird.

There is a dichotomy in American wildlife art, and probably the wildlife art of many countries, between art and science. David J. Wagner in his wonderful book 'American Wildlife Art' uses Karl Rungius and Louis Agassiz Fuertes as well-known examples. Many people knowledgeable about birds prefer Fuertes to Audubon.

This makes sense if you value science over art in wildlife art, not that Fuertes didn't also make very artistic paintings. He did and I in no way want to criticize him. I much regret that I didn't avail myself of the opportunity to study his work firsthand when I was a student at Cornell. But Rungius was more aware of the art world and incorporated it in his own wildlife paintings.

In my own work I continually struggle, especially with warblers, to create paintings that will make viewers see what I want them to see. There is an element of science in this, but in my work art always plays a larger part.

This is a long route to saying that though I'm happy with this little painting I'm also disappointed in it. All my recent warbler works seem like studies. I, hopefully, am working my way to a more ambitious portrayal of what I want 'you' to see in the wood warblers.

Warblers Need Crayons

2011-05-27T16:24:00.000-04:00

Before we left on our vacation I stocked up on some art supplies I thought might prove useful, in particular something that would allow me to quickly add color to field sketches. With many wood warblers on the horizon I wanted to be able to add color in the field, with the birds in front of me.

I've tried watercolor pencils with no success or happiness. So this time I decided to try Caran d'Ache Neocolor crayons. They promised brilliance, a prerequisite for wood warblers, as well as the ability to lay lighter colors over dark.

Well it made no difference. I never had the time, or room, to use them on the crowded boardwalk of Magee Marsh.

But since I've been home I've decided to give them a try on some warbler sketches, some based on field sketches, some based on photos I took.

At top is a male Cape May warbler, shaking itself off after a dip in the stream. To me it's in the running for most beautiful wood warbler, though my wife turns up her nose at this thought and suggests it's a bit over the top. The orange/rust/rufous on cheek though is brilliant against the yellow and black of the rest of the head. I think the crayons capture this fairly well. What they don't do, and this is more my fault than theirs, is create a convincing background.

We also saw a number of one of the more subtle warblers, the Northern Waterthrush. It tends to stay low near water and I'd hoped to set off the rich, colorful reflections in the water against the subdued browns of the bird itself. But a limited palette of just 10 colors left the richness I'd hoped for somewhat absent.

Still these crayons allow me to work fast, to experiment, to try out ideas for paintings. It's taking awhile for me to work myself up to more ambitious work. I think these crayons works will be a productive step along the way.

At the Zoo

2011-05-23T12:58:00.000-04:00

I've been looking forward, actually since last fall, to doing paintings of wood warblers once spring and summer got here. I had no expectation at all of skecthing African and other exotic birds.

But an unexpected visit to the McNeil Avian Center at the Philadelphia Zoo with visiting relatives this weekend brought surprise opportunities.

So some sketches of an Egyptian Plover, chasing around the much larger and higher Magpie Shrikes, as well as a Blue-breasted Kingfisher.

Also a Black-necked Stilt, a bird that is often within a 2-hour drive of here at Bombay Hook NWR, and a Southern Lapwing.

After many years of struggling to catch brief glimpses of birds in the field and then sketch them it's been getting easier and easier this year. First all the nearby wood warblers at Magee Marsh, then these really near birds at the zoo. I had less than 90 minutes to work on these so there was that pressure. But other than that it was quite a happy change. Most birds are seen for less than a second. These held still for a much longer time.

I've never thought to much about animals in captivity and what I think about that. Partially this is because I so rarely go to zoos. But I can say that this was a real treat as far as having subject matter that didn't disappear for hours at a time.

And of course there were all the other animals. I'll be going back to the zoo. And I know what probably struck me the most on the last visit, outside of the birds: an incredibly light on his feet rhinoceros. Surely it will appear in a field sketch sometime this coming summer.

Connecticut Warbler Continued

2011-05-19T11:50:00.002-04:00

I didn't really have time to work on this today but just couldn't resist. I was trying to add a little more definition to the painting, to keep the sense of complexity and the hidden quality of the warbler, without going completely toward chaos. In doing so I made the painting a bit darker. But I think this is a better painting and possibly a bit more accurate. There are still a few minor areas that bother me some. Only time will tell whether or not I leave them be.

I'm Ignoring You

2011-05-18T17:48:00.001-04:00

No the "I" is not me, and the "You" is not anyone who reads this. My reference is to this well hidden but eagerly sought Connecticut Warbler on the boardwalk at Magee Marsh last week. He is the "I" ignoring all birders.

I'm not the type of birder who goes to great effort to see a new species. I'll make some effort and I'm happy to see them but they're not a treasure hunt worth serious sacrifice. I think this may be a minority opinion. There are a lot of serious life bird searchers out there.

But when someone tells me that there is a rarely seen warbler right in front of me, and down on the ground not out of sight 100' up I'll try to find it, see it, maybe even sketch it. Well I have to say that an hour later when we finally got a good look at this bird we both were ready to quit birding for the rest of the afternoon. This was just far too mentally exhausting!

Why? Well I think this watercolor based on a photo I took shows why. This bird was buried in the ground foliage and forest detritus, much of which was taller than it was. And it wasn't in any hurry to move around and give potential viewers a clue as to its whereabouts. In fact there was plenty of time to just stop and do some preening.

I particularly liked this photo when I discovered that some of my shots had actually captured it because of the extreme nonchalance the Connecticut Warbler showed in the face of at least 50 people at any given time trying to get a look at it. Many were trying to add it to their life list, a rare opportunity right there before them.

I did a lot of sketches of warblers while I was there and showed most of them recently. I look forward to doing paintings or prints based on them. Photos will only be of secondary importance when I work on them.

But here there was only this one photo. After hogging valuable boardwalk space for most of an hour we moved on as soon as we'd gotten a good look and I'd shot a couple of quick photos. It would have been too rude to then sit there and try to sketch him.

But I had to laugh when I saw the photo. So my first work starring the warblers that we saw is based on a photo. This wasn't my intent. But it seemed like too good of an opportunity to pass up. I tried to give some sense of how buried he was in the foliage. I don't know these warblers and the colors in the photo are confusing. Was it blue, gray, brown, a combination? That's one reason I don't like to paint birds I don't know well. But this one I just couldn't resist, even with the confusion

This is a very busy, non-art week for me. I'd like to go back into this. But I suspect that I won't, at least this week.

Accepted Wisdom in Field Sketching

2011-05-16T13:41:00.000-04:00

One of the truisms of field sketching of birds is that you should only put down on paper what you recall seeing. You shouldn't make guesses. I think the main reason for this is that you can then trust what you've put down, as little as it may be.

This makes sense to me. But I have a hard time following it. I always want to put in something like the wing bars, or the bill, or the legs, assuming that I can make a good guess as to where they were and what they looked like. Often, if not most of the time, I'm wrong.

I thought of this as I looked over the field sketches I did at Magee Marsh over the last two weeks. At the end of the day I'd often look through guides that I had, especially a Richard Crossley's new photographic guide, to compare sketches and photos. Inevitably I'd see where I had something wrong.

But, at least for me, I'm not sure that this is bad. There's something about seeing that you've made a mistake, and often published it, that tends to make you notice, and remember, what you've done wrong. So for instance I noticed that my generic bills are often too thin, or too short, that my wingbars are placed too high or low on wing of some species, etc. I'm not sure I'd even know this if I didn't put down what I thought I'd seen and then found out I was wrong.

So I guess there are two ways to look at this: one, a sketchbook is a compendium of things truly seen, even if only in brief segments; and two, a sketchbook as merely a tool in learning to see and to sketch. I understand and can appreciate both. But for me at least I do see a lot of value in the second viewpoint.

Oddly enough I thought of this at the very end of our trip. A wildlife rehab clinic had a display of injured raptors and owls in the Magee Marsh parking lot as we stopped to use the bathrooms on our way out. Bald Eagles, Peregrines, Red-shouldered Hawks, Saw-whet Owls, Barn Owls, etc. I had to tear myself away and resist getting out my sketchbook. But what really struck me was the way the peregrine lifted his wings up a bit, like a person shrugging his shoulders, and then let his wings hang down.

I'd seen and sketched this exact pose on an Osprey I'd seen last fall. But when I got it home it looked thoroughly wrong. The bird almost looked wider than high because of the width of the shoulders. But when I saw the peregrine I knew that this was what the osprey had done. So my sketch was accurate even though it still looks thoroughly wrong. So there's the other side of the argument: the value of putting down exactly and only what you see.

With that said the rest of my sketches. At top a number of Semi-palmated Plovers.

Below a quick sketch of a Tri-colored Heron and a Common Moorhen.

Below a 'Wild' Turkey, that acted as though is was a domesticated bird and not wild in the least. Still an opportunity I coulnd't resist.

Below a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher, Palm Warbler, feeble attempt at Great Egret in flight, and a sketch of a female Cerulean Warbler. The last was interesting in that I actually using the sketch to make notes to help me ID the bird. It was only after I'd made this sketch that I and my wife, along with a few other observers, agrred that it was a female Cerulean.

Below two of the last birds I sketched on our last auto tour of the NWR, a Swamp Sparrow and the first Willow Flycatcher of the year.

Below a Pied-billed Grebe, Lesser Scaup, and a lifer Horned-Grebe. The last surely seems worthy of a painting. I wish he hadn't been too far away to even think about taking a photo.

And finally another Chestnut-sided Warbler, Ruddy Turnstone and Least Sandpiper. Sad to say the proportions of the head of both Turnstone and Sandpiper are off. And I viewed both through a scope. Even then though birds don't necessarily sit still. I think that both moved and so I tried to finish them off from memory. In both instances the heads were just too small. Soon it will be time to refamliarize myself with shorebirds.

The last talk we went to at Magee was about fall birding in Ohio. The speaker talked about the more subtle beauty of shorebirds as compared to breeding Wood Warblers. It's true that they do have their own unquestionable beauty. But for now it's time to proceed with warblers I think. Shorebirds will come soon enough.