Painting in Audubon's Lines

We all have one in a closet somewhere: an old print that has lost its lustre. 

Sunlight happens. A print that's hanging in a corner that's dark in January is suddenly illuminated by a shaft of morning sun in June. Shine enough such June morning sunbeams on a print, even one behind conservation glass, and bad stuff happens. 

The Arctic tern loses all the color in its blood-red bill and feet, and falls to sea, a pallid, lifeless ghost. 

Red is a notoriously fugitive pigment, subject to fading. We painted our house red, and I hope when it fades it'll have some nice wabi-sabi going on, like an old barn. At least that's the plan. I had to paint it barn red.

My friend Alan Poole has the most beautiful home near the shore in Massachusetts. I wrote about it, and his elegant, spare yet abundant lifestyle, here. 

In that sweet home hung two identical Audubon prints of Arctic tern. They date to 1835, and they were taken from two Elephant Folios. Many of these original collections,  depicting America's birds at 100% life size, and sold by subscription in Audubon's day,  were broken up, with the pages being sold separately. I'm not sure how Alan wound up with two Arctic terns, but they looked nice in his seaside home. 

Well, they could have looked a lot better with some color.

Here's the little block of wood pasted to the paper on the back of one of the prints. Who knows when this thing was first framed? It was in the days of manual typewriters, and long enough ago for the paper to go yellow.  And I'm trying to imagine folding back the margins of an Elephant Folio print. Geesh!! I guess cutting it down to size was too horrifying to contemplate, and framing all that white paper expanse too expensive.

When I visited in December, Alan asked me if I'd color the tern's feet and bill for him. I gulped. Paint? On an original Audubon Elephant Folio print? Me??

Umm....sure....if you want me to...

Are you sure?

"Look," Alan said. "These aren't doing me any good all faded out like this. Just give it a shot, see how it goes. If the first one turns out well, I'll give you the second to restore."

It was hard getting the print out of its frame. Those glazier's points were rusted in place. But I finally wrassled it free, thinking that it would probably take me longer to do that than to do the restoration.

I Googled images of Audubon's Arctic tern to see how an unfaded print might look. Then I started small, with the eye, and immediately knew I was in for a ride. For though the ink had faded badly, it was still on the paper, and it was resisting my watercolors something fierce. I managed to darken that eye and the bird immediately looked better, more alive. From there I moved on to the bill and feet, holding my breath as I painted inside the tiny fine lines, trying very hard not to go outside them, for there would be no correcting any mistakes on this plushy soft paper. The corner and tips of that bill...aaaack. Fine brush, held breath, steady hand. I got this.

Already it looked so much better. 

The bird still looked flat to me, and I studied the images I'd pulled up. It needed some sense of light and a sense of the direction of that light. Looks like Audubon intended the light source to be in the upper left corner of the page. That's the classical mode, makes sense. I took a bunch of deep breaths and started in on the bird's left wing, which was in shadow. I painted a cool blue-gray wash over the wing, and it took on a roundness it had lacked. I then found Audubon's shadow line on the mantle and painted a darker cool gray wash along it and to the right of it. Boom. The bird began to pop. Do click on the images to see detail.

One of the bolder things I did was to paint some very pale shadow lines to delineate the edges of the white feathers on the rump and tail. I like how that worked. I also painted his faded toenails black while I was working on his feet. I darkened the black on the primary tips, too.

It was a thrilling sensation to run washes over the fine black lines of Robert Havell's engraving. I could feel them beneath the brush. I don't paint birds in anywhere near the detail these prints exhibit; I paint masses of feathers and don't bother with barbule lines. But oh I loved painting over Audubon's and Havell's meticulously detailed work. 

I am keenly aware that purists might faint to see me taking watercolor washes over an original Elephant Folio print. But the owner of the print had asked me to and I was having a ball! Was I altering an historical artifact? Sure. Polluting it? Maybe. Improving it? I thought so, and I hope Alan will too.

When I got to the bird's black cap, the faded ink stopped my progress. It was resisting my paint. So I painted what I could, keeping the faded blue top on the cap, but darkening the lower border of the cap and working with Audubon's highlight areas to create dimension on the bird's head. Yeah, that works.

Then I did something that took nerve. I had always disliked the hard, oversized, sharp, triangular highlight on the eye of this bird. It reminded me of early Walt Disney depictions of Mickey Mouse. Early Mickey is referred to as "Pie-eyed Mickey" by collectors of Disney ephemera. 

 To me, it dated the piece, to a time when that's how people painted highlights on eyes. It made the bird look like a static, dusty museum mount. I wanted this tern to come to life! So I took a deep breath and painted over most of that giant pie slice of white. Then I took a thin wash of Chinese white and cerulean over the top of the eyeball, following its curve. Again, BOOM. Maybe not historically correct, but history's taking a back seat to color and life here. I can almost hear this tern's ratchety growl as it plunges toward the sea.

I think I'm done. I didn't touch the sky and seascape at all.  I loved the colors. Somehow the blue hadn't faded nearly as much as the bird did. I was very thankful for that, because I didn't think I could keep a wash smooth and even over such a large area. Phew!

 With some difficulty, I held myself back from putting a white highlight on the culmen of the bill, because Audubon hadn't. It needs one, but I didn't want to gild the lily any more than I already had.

I was so excited by the time I finished the restoration that I thought I'd add a little historical footnote. If it got sold as a fabulous example of original aquatint whose color had somehow miraculously been maintained, I wanted an astute dealer to see this minuscule penciled annotation, which would explain a lot.

Can't keep a Science Chimp down. It's all about the data, and the story. Speaking of stories...

I'll close with this photo of me and DOD, ca. 1971. Check out the Audubon print we're discussing. I'm destroyed. It's too good. 

Photo by Dan Kemp, ca. 1971

Miss you so much, DOD.  Holy cow. I just noticed that I've scheduled this post for your birthday, without even meaning to. That's what you call synchronicity. Hope you're watching. Know you are. 

xoxoxox Doo-Baby

 (Two Too Many)

A Taste of Massachusetts

Self-promotion is a fact of life for authors. Unless you're Stephen King, nobody's going to plan and underwrite a book tour for you. If you want a book tour, you plan it, you book the speaking engagements, negotiate the terms; you purchase and haul the books, pay for the hotels. I happen to enjoy traveling to speak, but it's not just a merry jaunt. A lot more goes into it than just showing up signing books, and accruing fame.

Because I believe that life should, if at all possible, include beauty and fun at every turn, I've learned to budget in time to visit friends and family, see some beautiful places, and that has been richly rewarding. It makes me want to do these speaking tours. It's the carrot I reach for. 

My longtime friend Alan Poole, for whom I did over 200 drawings when he was Editor of The Birds of North America: Life Histories for the 21st Century, has been inviting me to come see him in So. Dartmouth, Massachusetts for years. I finally took him up on it when I was in Massachusetts in December. I wanted to see where he lives, what it was about that place that clearly has a hold on him for good. It didn't take long to figure it out.

Here's his new house. It's small but mighty beautiful, lit clear through with windows, furnished simply and tastefully--a house to die for. Walking into it, I felt as I sometimes do when looking at a Pottery Barn or Restoration Hardware catalogue. I know I, with my endless crap and clutter and art gear, could never live this tastefully or simply, but oh I'd love to. 

 And he's got these amazing garden beds. This is early December in Massachusetts, and Alan's still harvesting all kinds of delicious salad greens and the most exquisitely sweet, brittle carrots I have ever tasted. Who knew that South Dartmouth has a microclimate like North Carolina? The Gulf Stream comes up and warms this magical corner of Massachusetts' coast. And there are truck gardens all over the place, taking advantage of this secret boon. Amazing.

The giant pinnate leaf is cardoon, eaten like fennel. There was spinach and mache and mesclun, sprinkled with fresh herbs...garden salads in December!

Heaven can wait if I can have these carrots, right out of the Massachusetts soil. 

Alan, cooking local bay scallops for us in his kitchen. 

His neighbor and culinary muse, Eva Sommaripa, well known among Boston area restrauteurs for her business, Eva's Garden, supplying them with incredible microgreens and herbs. Eva's a dear friend of Alan's and purveyor of such amazing and intensely delicious local food. I was humbled and star-struck to meet her. And I loved her outfit, perfectly suited to the New England climate. Layers!

Alan took my friend Erin and me to the beach just down the road from his home. 

He said, "This is my loon lookout." We climbed the dune and as we popped over the top, a common loon yodeled mournfully. If you click, you'll see him!

I couldn't even believe the sky.

Crab tracks.

Alan bent to pick up a handful of slipper shells. 

"Crepidula fornicata! "

I thought fast. Hmm. Crepidula would imply a crackling sound, crepitation, and -ula means small. Fornicata, well, hmm. I chuckled and gave up. Tell me!

"So a bunch of these guys pile on each other, and the one on the bottom changes its sex in response!" 

Well alrighty then! I was sasified.

That beach kept revealing its treasures, like the micro-leopard prints on a lady crab's shell. The closer we looked, the more wonderful it got.

And then standing up, the expanse and the junipers, the water on either side of the spit we were on...it was all too beautiful, even under a heavy December sky.

I love those winter days when you can't even tell what time it is. It could be morning, late afternoon...it's as if the sun itself forgets where it is.

This glimpse of a person living fully and well, in perfect harmony with the local climate, foodstuffs, people and landscape, was deeply moving and inspiring to me. In the end, it's love of place that speaks to me most of all. People who truly love where they live are the people I want to hang  with. That passion runs deep, and it's passion, after all, that I respond to. Well, that and beauty. For what else is there?