Painting the Prairie

 I always figured I'd be a career illustrator. And I was, for a long time. I did my first illustration for pay as a freshman in college, and slowly built a clientele from 1976 onward. By around 1988, I was chugging along doing commissioned watercolors at (gulp) $50 to $75 apiece. I wonder where some of those are now. Lots of book and magazine illustration; some packaging art; even got some drawings into The New Yorker.  I enjoyed it all. 

Around 2004, I decided that it was time to write and illustrate my own books. If I kept taking illustration jobs, I'd never be able to create a book of my own. Bill helped me with that, so much. "Just do a compilation of stuff you've already written! Your columns would make a great book!" Well, I had years of columns from the Backyard Bird Newsletter, which was sent out to a smattering of Bird Watcher's Digest's subscribers in the off months when the magazine wasn't coming out (it was a bimonthly, six issues a year). And they were pretty good--I was writing with a lot of heart and fire at that point. So they'd been published, but not to a wide audience, and they needed to be put together in a book. Bill was so right: it was a good, accessible, nonthreatening way to put my first book together. And I had the best little partner helping me along then. That boy could sell books.

Chet Baker, May 2006, age 3, with Mether's First Book.

Letters from Eden came out in 2006, with a truly ridiculous number of paintings and sketches inside. I really loved illustrating my own writing, and decided to do that from then on. There followed The Bluebird Effect in 2012, and Baby Birds in 2016. Saving Jemima came in 2019. After saying yes to almost every job that had come down the pike since 1976, it felt weird to turn down jobs, but I had to if I was going to finish my books. It was while I was writing The Bluebird Effect that I also realized that daily blogging was a huge block to my productivity, so I cooled it a bit on the frequency of my posts. Every day? Really? What was I thinking??

As I think about it, painting commissioned watercolors is in many ways a return to my old illustration days, when I enjoyed the challenge of creating a work of art with specific elements requested by the client. Some are very loose (perhaps just giving me the species of bird and leaving the setting up to my discretion), but most are pretty exacting and specific. People want a bird in a specific place, and sometimes it goes farther than that. The painting I'll show you now is one of the most exacting I've done, but I loved every minute of creating it. It presented more than an ordinary challenge.

This client is an ornithologist who has studied phoebes for much of his career. He wanted a painting of a Say's phoebe in the Smoky Hills of Kansas. This is a region known for distinctive chalk bluffs which rise up out of the ancient prairie like buildings. It's also known for its limestone fenceposts (lacking trees, I suppose, they made them out of the material at hand). My client wanted those in the painting. And native sunflowers, and yucca (!). He wanted the phoebe to be large in the frame. That would be the biggest challenge of all--to convincingly place a very small bird in a limitless landscape. 

  That is, in fact, the challenge that I face over and over as a bird painter. If someone likes a bird enough to request a painting of it in a specific place, they want to see the bird in detail. But how do I convey the vastness of the Kansas prairie, while placing a 7" bird in it right up close? Much to think about.

I don't have photos of my compositional phase, which is a lot of scribbles in soft pencil on large paper.

I shot some drafts to the client and got approval and tweaks, too. One of the things that became abundantly clear was that I couldn't use a limestone fencepost as a perch, because the post was too huge in relation to the bird. To be true, the post would have to be maybe twice the size it is in this draft composition, which was unacceptable to my eye. So I decided to put the bird on Maximilian sunflowers, which are in much better scale to its size.

The post is probably 1/4 the size it needs to be here in relation to the bird, and even that is getting a bit too big for the composition. Let's go to Plan B, push the posts into the middle distance, and put flowers up front instead.

Then I painted the most important thing: a half-sized study of the painting which would be my guide for executing the real thing. I just Xeroxed my sketch onto some watercolor paper, stretched the paper and painted it as quickly and messily as I could. In the process, I figured out what to do and what not to do; what to paint first and how to handle a very complex and (to be honest) rather vexing foregound.

I traced the composition onto a large sheet of watercolor paper (Winsor & Newton), then stretched the wet paper on a board using packing tape on the edges.

When it dried, I applied masking film and masking fluid around its edges to the parts I wanted to paint last. Then I could paint the landscape freely over those masked parts, knowing I could peel the mask off and have nice white paper to work on when the landscape was done. You can see here that the sunflowers and bird are masked off as a chunk. Same for the chalk bluff in the middle distance, and the white limestone fenceposts staggered across the prairie.

I learn a lot by looking at my colleagues' work, and I decided to try a technique the Barry Van Dusen explains in his magnificent book, Finding Sanctuary, which was published by the Massachusetts Audubon Society and Puritan Press.

If you're curious, here's my post about Barry's work, and a guest post from Barry himself.

https://juliezickefoose.blogspot.com/2020/06/the-most-beautiful-book-i-own.html

If you click that link you probably won't come back to see my stuff! But I hope you do.

Anyway, Barry mixes a neutral tint (I think it's ultramarine, burnt sienna and ultramarine violet) and paints the shadows in his paintings before adding any color. This is completely different from the way I usually work, but I wanted to try it here. I'm self-taught, and never learned the proper way to paint.

Here I go, tickling in those shadows.

So far, so good. I marched the shadows up to the middle ground. I was so excited to see how it would look with the prairie greens over the tinted shadows!

Well, that's cool! Here's a little close-up of the far-out ridges. I love those shadow colors of distant hills.

Something about having the shadows already in made it less scary to handle these wide-open spaces.

My work always gets harder, the closer to the foreground I get. 

Grasses are my nemesis. Making them look realistic without getting too regular and fussy always stretches me to the limit. I look at Cindy House's pastel paintings and just cannot believe how well she handles grass. She ENJOYS painting grass. There's So Much Grass here. I knew, because its leaves were so delicate and thin, that I would be unable to mask out the yucca plant in the right foregound, so I painstakingly painted it in opaque gouache over the grassy foreground.

Only when I had the foreground grasses under control would I allow myself to start on the Maximilian sunflowers and chalk bluff. I peeled off the masking film and rubbed the dried masking fluid away with my fingers and a soft white eraser.

Because it was September, I could go out and cut Maximilian sunflowers on my very own prairie patch and paint it from life! That was awesome.

Oh look! A song sparrow. I think I know him...

The sunflowers brought a needed touch of green to a rather sere landscape. I did not want to do a big green painting. Greens can get away from you. So I kept them very dialed back.

Here come the sunflowers!  I still have the limestone fenceposts masked out here. 

I got absorbed in the fenceposts and painted the chalk bluff, too, before I remembered to take another shot.

One of the ways you say, "It's sunny" is to paint deep sharp shadows on things like bluffs and fenceposts. I could feel the light pouring through, and the sky wasn't even in yet. 

I couldn't wait to paint the sky! All the shadows were in--now I need a sky that will convince you it's sunny out!

But first the Say's phoebe--such a subtly beautiful bird it is. I painted a fresh immature with cinnamon wingbars and a strong cinnamon wash below.

All in but its black tail!

It's sky time, y'all. No progress photos on the sky--that happens too fast to take pictures, and all wet on wet! I am particularly pleased with the perspective of the clouds going off in the distance, and the sunny space they create in the landscape beneath. They're blurry, which for me evokes the prairie wind, which never stops. The sunflowers are tossing in that wind.

I didn't want to pack this one up to send. Sometimes I wish I could keep my paintings. But off it went, to Kansas, where it truly belongs.

Say's Phoebe in the Smoky Hills, Kansas.  Private Commission, October 2021 Watercolor, 14" x 18"

The Most Beautiful Book I Own

 One of my favorite gigs is writing nature book reviews for the Wall Street Journal. There is little I love better than getting a package in the mail from the editors there. It takes me absolutely FOREVER to read them, since I can't sit down during the day and only read at night, before I fall asleep, but I somehow manage to get it done. Then I get to say what I love about them. If I don't love a book, I won't review it, because to me, the point of a book review is to bring what's wonderful to more readers. And I have found something wonderful. It's called Finding Sanctuary. I asked Barry Van Dusen to prepare a guest blogpost about the first book he's both written and illustrated. Barry is a career natural history illustrator, and those of us who know his work have been literally slobbering, waiting for him to haul off and write his own book, illuminated by some of his gazillion field sketches and paintings he curates so meticulously in his western Massachusetts home. 

Skunknett River painting set-up 

This man sketches, draws and paints from LIFE. From moving, living birds and animals, plants, insects. Outside, plein air, making landscapes appear on paper. I look at this forest scene and shrink into a fetal position, thinking about what it would take to make a watercolor of it. But Barry's like Nike. He just DOES it. And his book is an absolute masterwork, given the most lavish and sensitive treatment possible by Mass Audubon and Puritan Press in Hollis, NH. You simply MUST have it. 

 I have great empathy for other authors who are launching books in these upside-down days. I had the grandest book tour planned for New England (see left sidebar), and none of those events are happening now. The months Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's wonderful publicist, Maria Mann and I spent logisticizing and putting it together, the dozens of emails confirming every detail with the organizers...all for naught in 2020, and I stayed home to love my kids, feed bluebirds and raise a song sparrow instead, and that is all FINE and as it should be. But oh, I would have loved to have the chance to stump for Saving Jemima.

  On one hand, maybe more people are interested and have time to read books--I'm hearing from lots of friends who are only just reading their copies of Saving Jemima, which came out in fall 2019. On the other, it's really hard to sell books when you can't give book talks. So in that spirit, I asked Barry to write a guest post about Finding Sanctuary, in the hope that you, my good readers, would consider adding a copy to your library, and maybe gifting a couple more. Here's Barry!

My work as a nature artist takes me in many directions—book illustration, lectures and teaching, studio painting and exhibitions—but the most engaging part of my job, and certainly the most fun, is outdoor drawing and painting. So when Amy Montague, director of Mass Audubon’s Museum of American Bird Art, approached me in 2014 with the idea of a Massachusetts statewide residency, I didn’t need much convincing.  I would visit, paint and draw at each one of Mass Audubon’s 61 wildlife sanctuaries around the state. In previous years, I had taken part in several residency projects around New England, but this would be the most ambitious one yet. I wanted to give each Mass Audubon sanctuary the attention it deserved, and insisted on a two-year working period. In the end, the residency work spanned more than four and a half years!

In our preliminary discussions, Amy and I decided that I should not feel the need to work toward any predetermined list of species or sanctuary “specialties”, though many of the subjects I painted would fit that description. Instead, my aim would be to seize on artistic opportunities as I encountered them. This approach granted me the expressive freedom to pursue whatever piqued my curiosity, admiration, or imagination. 

Incubating Piping Plover, Allens Pond, p.67

I live in central Massachusetts, and most of the sanctuaries are within reasonable driving distance, so I typically spent a full day at each location and returned home by nightfall.  Overnight trips to locations farther from home afforded me the opportunity to visit sites more than once, and to be afield at dawn and dusk—propitious times for wildlife.

Smaller Purple Fringed Orchid, West Mountain p.158

In some instances, I timed my visits to work with very specific subjects, like the yellow lady’s slippers at High Ledges or the purple-fringed orchids at West Mountain. For places like Marblehead Neck or Sampson’s Island, I made sure to visit at the most productive times of year (when birds were passing through in the first instance, and settled onto their nests in the second).  I took seasonal and weather-related factors into consideration for every visit, and studied the sanctuary maps ahead of time, hoping to maximize my time at each location.

American Redstart, Marblehead Neck p. 58

When I first started the project, I thought I might do all of the watercolor paintings on location. I fancied I would arrive at a new sanctuary, perhaps do some drawings, paint a watercolor, and then move on to the next location. What I hadn’t anticipated was the variety and abundance of subject matter that I wanted to depict. I am not the speediest field artist (nor the slowest), but the best I can hope for in a day’s work is three finished watercolors, and more often only one or two. I realized that to do justice to the diversity I encountered in the time available, I couldn’t limit myself exclusively to fieldwork. Moreover, I realized that some of my best ideas for pictures came to me after a visit, when I’d had the leisure to mull over my experiences and ponder on the imagery. Consequently, the work you see in the book is a result of both field and studio efforts.

The Horse Barn in a Spring Snowsquall, Wachusett Meadow pp. 138-139

            I painted many BIRDS for the residency, but also worked with landscapes (some featuring Mass Audubon buildings), flowers and plants, butterflies, dragonflies and other insects, mammals, salamanders, turtles, frogs and fish.  Looking at the entire body of work, I see an obvious bias toward certain subjects, and for this I make no apologies.  I tell my students:  Draw what you LOVE, and it will reflect in your work!

            Much of what I’ve learned about the specialized craft of field painting comes from my exposure to European artists. Painting nature subjects outdoors from life is not commonly practiced here in the United States, but it’s a popular pursuit among many artists in Europe. During projects sponsored by the Artists for Nature Foundation (Netherlands), I’ve had the opportunity to work alongside some of the world’s most talented field artists. They have shown me how to select, organize and carry materials and equipment, which types of optics are most effective, and methods for working in a variety of situations. Ultimately, every field artist formulates an approach best suited to their own unique aims and temperament, but my exposure to these other artists has greatly accelerated the process of finding what works best for me. 

Field Kit  p. 8

     Painting outdoors with watercolors comes with its own set of challenges, and you’ll encounter most of them in the pages of this book. On sunny days, light conditions change rapidly as the sun moves across the sky, especially in the morning and evening hours. While light conditions can be challenging, they can also become the driving force in a painting (e.g. Wings of Winter, below). 

     I could usually avoid rain through careful scrutiny of the forecasts, but New England weather doesn’t always play by the book. I’ve learned to carry a few sheets of plastic in my pack to quickly cover up paper and materials, and a rain jacket if the weather looks iffy. Despite these precautions, I had some frustrating sessions with rainy weather.

Osprey in the Rain, North Hill Marsh p. 74

    Cold could be mitigated by layering up properly, using warm gloves and neck gaiters, and carrying a few of those chemical hand- and foot-warmer packs. Wind joined the cold and added to the challenges at some locations. But winter conditions could also offer up rewards, like the ice storm just before my visit to Habitat, which allowed access to colorful, interesting twigs sheared from the treetops. 

     Humidity, both high and low, can be a serious issue for the watercolor painter. Too much moisture in the air (the more common condition in New England) slows the drying of washes and can bring progress to a standstill. Very dry conditions have the opposite effect, causing the paint to dry so quickly that there is no time to manipulate wet passages. 

     And then, there are the miscellaneous annoyances: biting insects and ticks, wet feet, and poisonous plants, to name a few. These are often the first memories that come to mind when I recall a particular day in the field!

Swallows Over Barnstable Great Marsh  p. 87

Some subjects lend themselves easily to location painting. It’s no accident that landscapes are the most popular subjects for outdoor painters: they stay in one place (thank you!), and offer endless variations of design and mood. All of the landscapes in this book were at least begun in the field, and many were completed on location. 

Botanical subjects offer the same luxury of working time as landscapes, and could be approached in a similar manner. One obvious difference is the shift in scale—the difference between macro and micro. With plants, I usually slow down and pay more attention to morphology and details. Glancing through these pages, you’ll notice that I enjoy the details of nature. I often feel that these are too important and interesting to generalize or suggest, and am driven to record them accurately.

Cinnamon Fern Fiddleheads, Nashoba Brook  p. 126

  

            In my opinion, studio work offers even greater opportunities for an artist’s creative side to take command. Removing myself from the fact of the subject can be liberating, allowing my imagination to take a freer hand. Studio work can also be more conceptual and carefully planned: I can combine and rearrange elements, manipulate scale, and fine-tune the balance of a composition in myriad ways.  

     In the studio, I can borrow freely from a variety of sources. I can refer to sketches made an hour ago or years ago. I can repaint unsuccessful field paintings, building on their strengths while avoiding faults made on the spot. I can use specimens of plants, rocks, and other natural materials, even weave in memories and associations from the past. Where field painting is intuitive, spontaneous, and improvisational, studio painting can be conceptual, cerebral, and imaginative.

Wings of Winter (snow buntings), Kettle Island  p. 57

            As an artist who wishes to portray natural subjects with fidelity, my aim is to celebrate and admire the complex beauty of nature. At the same time, I want to express my wonder and awe, and retain the excitement and emotions that accompany my field encounters. To that end, I may choose to exaggerate, embellish, invent, and even distort to achieve my expressive ends. As Picasso famously said, “Art is the lie that tells the truth.”  And so, I am forever seeking a balance—between field and studio, fact and expression, truth and feeling.  

Here ends Barry's guest post. Zick, back with you. 

 Heads up: It's not cheap, but ohhh, the quality in every page. Hardcover. The paper is like satin. The design was overseen by the artist himself, every single page. The color reproduction is impeccable (same deal--Barry was on press at Puritan in Hollis, NH with it). It's an art book, a visual and sensual delight. You will be delighted you treated yourself!  To order your copy of  Finding Sanctuay, click https://tinyurl.com/vandusenbook 

Times being what they are, Barry has had a virtual book launch. He and I recorded a half-hour interview on Zoom, where you can see us each sitting in our respective studios: me asking questions and Barry answering them. It's a lot of fun. David Sibley will also check in, and (late breaking news) so will Lars Jonsson! If you love bird art, this is a don't miss event. Here's a link to a recording of the book launch/interview:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uX92I5DfMuI&feature=youtu.be

   

Zickefoose in Wisconsin

What is this frog eating? Read on...

I'm about to leave for four days in Wisconsin, where I'll have a special exhibit of 16 paintings opening alongside the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum's venerated Birds in Art exhibition this very weekend, September 11-13. You can find out more here. Be sure to scroll down to find me. I can hardly believe it's going to happen. This year's Master Artist is John Busby, whose sketches and paintings of living birds just fly off the page, so vigorous and true are his lines. Some of my best buddies will also be attending and showing work, including James Coe, Cindy House, Debby Kaspari and Barry Van Dusen.

Please, if you don't already know their work, hit those links and see why I'm so proud of my artist friends.

And if you are anywhere near Wausau, Wisconsin, please come see us, and this amazing show of bird art from all over the world! I'll be speaking and signing books at 1 pm Sunday, September 13, at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum. It's also "Artrageous Weekend," a terrific time to visit Wausau. Bird art, street art, food, cheese. What's not to love?

As you might imagine, I'm kind of busy, leaving tomorrow morning. I have a To Do list that would choke Fergus the Frog. If you don't know who that is, give this story of my bird-eating bullfrog a read. Thought I should leave you with something fun to do.