A Painting for Sara: Part 2

I would imagine that some of you were eager for Part 2 of my watercolor step-by-step. I was, too. But then, frost. If I don't respond to the biggest events in my world, if I don't write about them, then I'm not really living in the world. So instead you got a video of morning glories gone plasticky, and the exhalation of a humid, warm greenhouse. Death and rebirth, in five minutes.  And oh my. Looking outside, there's a gigantic full moon balloon sinking on the brightening western horizon. And I notice, even by moonlight, for the first time that one of the pines we planted in 1992 has leaned over, gone all yellow overnight, and died. Life. It creeps in, demands one's attention, minute by minute. 

When we last left the painting, it looked like hell. But the foreground branches were done! Now I could turn my attention to the forest behind. At this point in the painting, I usually make a couple of paper dolls that I tape in place, so I can see what I need to do with the background to make the birds sing. These paper dolls take a matter of minutes to paint, and I sometimes wonder what my work would be like if I painted my final paintings with such speed and abandon. There's power and joy in painting on copy paper, of not caring a whit how it looks. You're just getting the information down and moving on.  Some of us do our best work on cocktail napkins. It's a no-risk, no-investment proposition.

In this bit, you can see that I've gone in and painted sunlit branches where all those ugly white slashes were. I've been careful to lay in the darks around the masked areas, so when the masking comes off I can paint brightly lit foliage and it'll stand out nicely. 

Now the tree trunks that I masked out get painted, and that gives the forest depth, to have some light trunks in the foreground, and darker ones in back. I'm noodling away at all those sunlit branches. The paper dolls in place make me happy and help me remember that when I'm done with the main meal, I still have dessert waiting! I call painting the birds "dessert." I still have the foreground ferns to deal with, but that'll be fun. You can see here that I've masked out some ferns and some random shapes in the right foreground. I made those shapes by dipping crumpled Saran wrap in masking fluid, then dabbing it on the paper. This produces a pleasing organic effect that would be nearly impossible to create on purpose. Nature is full of such random organic shapes, so a painting that imitates her should be, too.

Outside, the bonsais are at their absolute peak. I love Halloween for so many reasons, and my beautiful trees are one of them. Life again, going on, the party raging just outside the door. I've done a lot of partying this fall. So beautiful, so protracted, so satisfying.

I find The Bacon waiting at the front door like a trick-or-treater, with a ghastly memento. He wants to bury his lucky bunneh foot in the couch. Um. Sorry to disappoint you, Bacon. He brought both hind legs from a well-picked carcass he scavenged somewhere out in the meadow, and asked to bring both of them into the house. A reasonable dog request, denied by a fussy human.

I start painting the sunlit row of ferns in back, taking  washes of of bright yellow-green into the masked area. The play of light and shadow brings the painting to life. I've made a bit of a problem for myself, though, and now have to integrate this very bright line into the rest of the mass. I do this by mixing up the darks and lights in the contact zone.

Now for the ferns in the lower right corner. All that masking, painting ghostly fern shapes with masking compound, is worth it. I paint pale fronds with ease, simply running a light yellowish wash over the fern shapes I've masked out. Painting some similar ones in darker green around them adds a pleasing dimensionality. I paint loose, wet russet forest floor trash into the random shapes created with Saran wrap dipped in masking fluid. Paper dolls are off, and I'm drawing in the details of the warblers with pencil. 

In this closeup of the spruce branch, you can see the paler needles that I  masked, which lay over the darker ones I painted first. Really, painting the birds is the very least of making this painting. I could get away with a vignette, just a bird on a branch, but that's not how I roll. Sara loves Hog Island. I am determined to make her a scene that will take her back there, let her smell the hay-scented ferns over the salty tang of the ocean, even in the depths of a Buffalo winter. OK. Deep breath. Time for dessert!

Every warbler has its own yellow. Magnolia yellow is very rich, with some orange in it. 

I want to see how the green back of the female is going to work with the background. Hmm.

Black stripes help define it. It's such fun to see the black go in. Such fun to put it in!!

I take the female nearly to completion before turning to the delicious velvet-black mask and breast stripes of the male. 

It's late on the afternoon of November 6, and a shaft of sun comes in the west studio window, slamming onto the painting! Yes! Just what I was trying to paint! It's like a benediction.  I can almost smell my hay-scented ferns start to emanate their sweetness in the warm sun.

Liam comes running in to see. He and I talk a lot about light as he draws and paints with markers in the living room and I paint with watercolors in the studio. I so love these times when he and I are home and I can give him pointers on his art, and he can reciprocate with observations on mine. It feels rare and incredibly precious, and it is. We will look back on it as some of our happiest times.

Birthday Prismacolor/Copic marker spree! What a joy, to be able to walk into an art supply store with my son and swoon together at the sights and smells before us. To give him a pair of experienced eyes for his work, to help him refine his own. To encourage him to branch out to drawing objects from life, in the round. A bit scary, but he's more than up to the challenge. To have children who share my interests, and then take them farther--it's a great blessing. Phoebe's doing a lot of snorkeling in Panama, studying coral reefs at the moment. !!

It's not all coconuts and warm caressing seas in Panama, but this photo by Avery Cheng suggests it.  Let it be so. 

Elaine Shen caught Phoebe doing what she does everywhere she goes--connecting and engaging people. Little people, all the better.  Sigh. This photo just takes me apart. Evan, Southern version.

Where was I? Oh! Painting. You see the problem.

In go the stripes on the male! I call Liam in again, to see what a difference a little black makes. Whoa!

I leave the painting for a day or so to season. I know I have more work to do on the birds to round out their forms, as they're looking a bit flat.  It's good to walk away from your work now and then. It's necessary.

When I return to it a couple days later, a problem in the lower foreground leaps out at me--that hard 45 degree angle of green cutting into the spruce needle path through the ferns. That's no good. I fix that, and do some more work in the ferns around the female bird, to help her pop a bit. It's finally ready to sign. 

For Sara: Patron, Friend and Great Teacher and Spirit.

Time for another deep breath. I take a bunch of photos of the painting, pack it in foamcore and cardboard, so nobody could bend it if they tried; scribble DO NOT BEND all over the package,  drive it to the post office, and slap a lot of insurance on it, sending it Priority with tracking.  It's always a scary thing to do. And three days later I get an email with this photo of a very happy Dr. Sara Morris with her new office-brightener. Bawww!! For you, who give your students everything you've got, the pair of birds instead of one; for you, the ferns and spruces, the sea and sky, the time and extra effort--for that radiant smile.

A Painting for Sara: Watercolor Demo

For years, I've been painting a scene each year for the Wilson Ornithological Society's Willliam and Nancy Klamm Service Award recipient. I get to paint their favorite birds for ornithologists. I love doing that. Always love a challenge, and a keen audience. I've painted everything from goldfinches to great tinamous, and have loved every second of it.

This was 2011's Klamm award for Dr. Charles Blem and Leann Blem. They did the definitive nesting study of  prothonotary warblers, and gave outstanding service to the Wilson Ornithological Society. I knew I wanted to paint something that evoked nesting, and I had this notion of a bird tugging at the wiry petioles of red maple flowers. First I had to find out if they used those in their nests, and then if male prothonotaries gather nesting material. Affirmative on both counts. I knew I wanted a dark, rather dull-colored background for the glowing orange bird. So I chose the water's surface on a dark and rainy day. The Blems loved the painting. Score!

In 2010, Dr. Jerome Jackson, pre-eminent expert on ivory-billed woodpeckers, received the award. 

I'd worked closely with him to create this painting for an article he'd written for The Auk, the journal of the American Ornithologists' Union.  It would be the cover of the journal. The emails, sketches and jpegs flew between us, and it was a thrill, honor and delight to collaborate with Dr. Jackson on this rather complex painting. (The reflection of the flying bird drove me NUTS). So it was a great surprise for him to receive the original as his award!

Well, Sara Morris, who is the ornithologist and college professor who has been commissioning these paintings all these years, and who has been the one to deal with me and also the one who gets to open the big flat box when it's all done, wanted a painting for herself at long last. She had been given the Koessler Distinguished Faculty Award at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York, where she lights the intellectual fires of students every day. And she decided to use the award to commission a painting from me! 

  I cackled with glee at the prospect of painting something for Sara. She loves all the same birds I do. Would it be a collared redstart, a Blackburnian warbler, or a magnolia warbler?

Magnolia warbler finally won out. Whoot!! I love those little birds! I was down for it. And I knew I wanted to create a scene that evoked the sights and scents of Hog Island Audubon Camp off Bremen, Maine, to which Sara has devoted so much of her expertise and enthusiasm and knowledge over the years. 

It doesn't look like much, I know, but it's all encoded in the first concept sketch. I love this stage of creating a painting.  Looking at it, I shoulda stuck closer to this composition! Ah well. 

Would the male be singing? The female looking on adoringly? Hmm.

No, I don't think so. The female would be making her own weather, and she'd be front and center, because I've heard Dr. Morris give a wonderful talk about female birds and why they look and act as they do.

All that worked out, it was time to draw the forest and ferns.

  

You can see the masking film over the birds, and some of the masking fluid on tree trunks and branches.

 It's all dry and ready to be painted over. 

I'd mask out some tree trunks, and some areas that I wanted to be lit by sun, and the birds, of course. I was thinking hard about what order I'd paint everything. I burn a lot of mental wood in this construction phase.  In the photo above, I've put a few tentative needles on paper, and the ugly truth has hit me that these spruce branches are going to look like they're floating on air if I don't mask at least some of those needles out and lay a good juicy background wash behind them.  Then,  once it dries, I'll paint the dark needles right atop the background wash.  The ones I've masked out will survive the background wash, and be lighter in tone than it will be. Crappity crap crap. Ugh. I hate masking needles. But mask I did.  I promised myself I wouldn't get totally anal about it and mask every damn needle. Been there, done that. 

Kissing that test branch goodbye, I sprayed down the stretched sheet of watercolor paper with clear water. Quickly and boldly, I painted in the sky and water wash. Not much of it would show in the finished painting, but I needed to have light, bright sky and water blue coming through the trees. 

While everything was wettish, I laid in the sunshine. It looks really weird, I know, but you have to paint the lightest, brightest values first, and really juice them up, because watercolor dries paler than it goes on. You can always darken something, but it's really hard to lighten something. This stage of the painting amazes me, because it looks nothing at all like the finished piece. That's part of what's so cool about taking photos as you go. You can capture your terror on beholding what you've wrought.

While that was wet, I laid in some dark areas. You can see now that I masked out some understory trash and hay-scented ferns in the lower right corner. Quickly, I brought in some dark green shadows so those masked features would pop out when I finally removed the mask and painted them. It's the wet on wet work that gives this area such life. 

Time to define the path through the ferns. Some darker green and some spruce-needle flooring goes in. 

This wet on wet work is really fun, but it's also a bit nerve wracking, because you're juggling so many things at once, before everything dries and you can't get those beautiful diffuse washes any more. See the masked-out edges on the upper right of the ferns? Those are going to be bright yellow, like sun, later on. 

I continue hacking away at the distant trees. That's kind of fun, because I keep it pretty loose. I'm basically just printing the patterns with the tip of a large flat brush. I am definitely not giving this forest an every-needle treatment. It's going to be hard enough work just painting masses of foliage.  You can see the masked masses of foliage shining through the dark background trees. 

I take a break to photograph a robin who has plopped into the midst of my Gartenmeister fuchsia. Wow. It's so beautiful out there, so many birds flying through. That looks like a painting itself. Robins. SO beautiful. So lucky to have this thrush be a common bird. But I always drop everything when there's one on the lawn out my studio window, or dipping into the Bird Spa. 

I keep filling in the forest. Then I start on the near spruce branches. I want to get them done, and forget to take photos as I work.  You can see the masked needles sticking out as pale in the photo below. 

I peel off the masking fluid and paint in the paler needles in the branch clusters. I'm really glad I took the time to mask them out, lay in a good background wash, and paint the branches carefully, because they're going to have to hold the birds up, so they need to have a certain amount of realism so they're as believable as the birds. 

I peel off the masking compound in the background forest. At this point the forest looks like absolute crap, but I will save it. So much to do yet.

This is my process. I throw some fat into the fire, it flares up, I pull it back out. Repeat until painting is under control or goes up in flames.

Honestly, I haven't had a painting go up in flames in years. I am a dogged thinker and worker. By the time brush and paint hit wet paper, I've thought out most of the pitfalls I know I'll run into, and I'm ready for them. (But see branch masking debacle, above. It's always somethin'). Ach, there's still so much to do, all over this piece. Writing about painting it makes me remember the effort and angst that goes into making something look loose and effortless. Oh, and I worked on this piece off and on from October 27-November 7, getting to the point with each session where I couldn't look at it any more, and going off to do something else. They don't usually take that long, but I don't usually tackle a spruce forest with hay-scented fern understory, either. I knew, even as I planned the painting, that I needed to lose myself for a week or so in the fragrant little universe of Hog Island in summer. 

To be continued...