A Mighty Little Magazine

  I'd like to honor the magazine that has featured my writing and art for 35 years. It's quite a story.  Bird Watcher's Digest is still going strong. It was launched from a brave notion, using my late in-laws’ retirement savings as they stood in 1978.

Bill Thompson Jr. and Elsa Ekenstierna Thompson, with Pokey. Clearly not 1978; more like 2009 or so. This is the den where a magazine was born. Now they're both gone, and the den is, too.

  My late mother-in-law, Elsa Thompson, took up birding in her 40’s, and thought there should be a digest for birdwatchers, since there was nothing of the kind out there. What a cool idea! Circa

1979, I saw my first issue, featuring Roger Tory Peterson’s sooty terns, at Out of Town Newsstand in Harvard Square. Having only discovered that birding was a thing upon entering college as a lifelong but unconnected birdwatcher in 1976, I could NOT believe there was a magazine devoted to my passion! I remember standing there, reading it, marveling, and wondered if they would ever consider publishing my writing or painting. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t submit anything until 1986; I needed some time to hone my embryonic skills. Plus, the magazine’s interior was still being printed on newsprint when I saw it, and art looks ever so much better on glossy paper. 

My first cover, a stretching ruby-crowned kinglet, was published in 1986. Article after article, most illustrated by my watercolors, followed. I felt like the luckiest person in the world. 

 

My first 7 covers, spanning 1986-1992. I began writing for the magazine almost as soon as I started painting covers. The piping plover from 1988 has a big article about my work conserving piping plovers in Connecticut. There's a lot of personal history in these issues! To wit:

See that redpoll/junco cover, left, bottom row? Bill talked me into painting that for the Jan/Feb 1991 cover. He called me a lot more than he would have needed to, to get the painting over the finish line. By the time it came out on the cover, we were "talking," as my kids say.

 I didn’t meet BWD's (then) Managing Editor, Bill Thompson III until we collided at the World Series of Birding in May, 1990. We were married in 1993. Persuasive guy. 

                                        I look at this photo and think, "Wha ha happen?" 

There followed a series of covers. Below are ones spanning 1993-1999. 

And here's 2000-2011.

Bill Thompson III was Editor and Publisher until he had to leave us in March, 2019. Though Bill’s bank of knowledge and energy was irreplaceable, Editor Dawn Hewitt comes as close as anyone could to filling his Size 12’s. Wendy Clark has added her considerable vision and energy as Publisher. I do my best to lean in and help the staff with anything remotely sciencey, as well as with thorny bird ID’s and bird feeding/housing/gardening advice. And I read every issue for scientific accuracy as well as flow and typos. By the time the magazine goes to press, it’s been by several mighty sharp sets of eyes.

 

I write a column called “True Nature” for every issue, right alongside such luminaries as David Bird, Mark Garland, Alvaro Jaramillo, Al Batt and Scott Weidensaul. Iowa’s fabulous Diane Porter writes frequently for the magazine as well. I also have a column in every issue of Watching Backyard Birds, which comes out in the months that Bird Watcher’s Digest doesn’t. It’s good to write a lot; to have to have something to show for all your rumination. I love sitting down to write a column, to winnow out all the things I see and then gather a lifetime of observations, to knead them all into dough and bake it into a story for our readers.

 

2013-2020.

35 years after that first little kinglet was published, I’ll have my 30th cover on the May/June 2022 issue! I've got something published in most issues, and I still feel like the luckiest person in the world to be affiliated with this magazine.

Here's the body of work as it stands...well, just the covers I've painted over the last 34 years. The articles and columns in many other issues are legion.

Here's last year's contribution--a yellow-billed cuckoo, guarding her enormous blue eggs. I also wrote the cover article and species profile for that issue. This was my 29th cover since 1986.  Cover #30, for July/August 2022,  is already in the planning stages, featuring one of my favorite small birds. 

It’s pretty darned amazing that Bird Watcher's Digest is still humming along, cranking out excellent content for its beloved and very loyal subscribers. Chalk it up to love and sheer will. Thanks to the Plague, most of the staff has been working from home since spring 2020—another thing that amazes me no end. HOW CAN IT BE 35 YEARS???

 

 

Publisher and Publisher Emeritus. Both worked their entire careers putting out the best bird watching magazine ever.

Thank you very much for your indulgence. I hope you've enjoyed this retrospective--color, bird painting and a whole lot of love.

 

Kestrel On Commission

  Today I'd like to give you a little glimpse of what it's like to paint a watercolor to order, for a private commission. I was asked by a longtime follower of my writing and art to paint a kestrel who visits his Indiana backyard. I have never painted a full-sized kestrel, so I was eager to take this on. My path was clearly laid out; Mr. F. wanted the bird perched on his deck railing, looking into the window, as it does when it visits. I was a little doubtful that I could make an interesting painting of someone’s lawn and deck railing, but when I asked for photos, I could see that the beautiful forest border in my client’s Indiana backyard  would allow me to play up a fall feeling and sail through.

I struggled with the composition for awhile, doing a throwaway study of it as a vertical piece. Yes, it's on horrible copy paper that wrinkles badly. This is on purpose. I don't want to spend any more time than I have to slapping it together. It's purely for composition and color thinking purposes.

I realized that the bird needed more space, and the yard needed more features to be recognizable. It took quite awhile for me to come to the idea of making it a larger horizontal composition, but when that finally occurred to me, things came together quickly. (The whole thing took about a week to lay out and paint, so "quickly" is a relative term).  Unfortunately, I did not take progress photos of the painting. The washes were so large and so wet that I just kept plowing away. The original is 12 x 16, which is big as my paintings go.

 I I painted the treeline first, keeping it very loose, laying down an underpainting of New Gamboge yellow to tie it all together. I used the same underpainting on the lawn grass, fully aware that It was not the bright almost kelly green that appears in the photo. Let’s just say that in my painting there have already been a few hard frosts. I abhor painting bright green grass, always shifting it to lime or yellow if I can get away with it. For me, lawn grass green looks nice in nature, but in my watercolors, it's a beauty killer. On the other hand, I always enjoy painting weathered wood, so I knew the railing would be a piece of cake to paint, even though it’s a pretty tough compositional element, unequivocally dividing the composition.

The reference photo was taken from eye level on a tall man. I  thought it would help to drop the point of view, so you’re viewing the bird and railing more at eye level. That would in turn drop the treeline, and reduce the amount of lawn I’d have to deal with. 

 In progress, on my desk. I haven't finished the bird, but it's getting there. 

 

The dwarf apple trees in the reference photo, which I intended to include so as to make the backyard recognizable, lacked a little in aesthetic impact, one having lost its leaves. I aged them by about 30 years , twisted their trunks, and clothed them in leaves, giving them probably more fall color than they would really have. Call it artistic license, to tart up some apple trees. I masked them with liquid masking compound and didn't remove it until I was all done with the forest and lawn. That turned out to be a good choice because I went over the lawn several times with large brushes and washes, trying to tame the green into something that would look nice with a kestrel's brilliant colors, and painting around those branches would have been a nightmare.

 

So it goes with my paintings…I make sure everything else is done before I get to start on the bird. But I have to keep backtracking. Once the deck railing went in, it mandated a lot more detail in the forest and the lawn, so there was a lot to do there. I knew that would happen. It's tough to have a super-detailed subject in the foreground and just haze out the background, unless you want it to look like someone’s photo. 

 

I knew that the sky could make or break the painting. I didn’t want a super bright blue, and I wanted lots of clouds, to give it light and air. I wanted a feeling that the weather could change at any moment, the way it does in October. And like magic, when the clouds went in, the whole thing lightened up and you could see sunshine. I absolutely love painting clouds. I sketch them in pencil very loosely on the paper. Then, the trick is to get the paper as wet as you can. Then paint in the gray underbellies of the clouds, darker than you want them, because watercolor fades as it dries. Then, while everything is still sopping wet, get your brush loaded with blue and with the tip just tickle in the areas of blue sky, letting the blue spread and bleed into the white you’ve left around the cloud shadows. Voila. Try to avoid hard edges, but when you’re painting a big sky area,  they happen while you’re busy somewhere else. That’s what makes it watercolor. Such a blast to paint cumulus clouds. You just have to wet that paper and let them happen. This medium was made for skies and clouds. 

 

My best reference for skies turns out to be the photos I take many times yearly of the Three Graces. I found just the sky I wanted in this mid-October photo.

 

My client had a firm idea of what he wanted in the bird. He’d found a photo of a kestrel online with just the pose and attitude he wanted. While I liked the angle, and the bird was adorable, I wasn’t crazy about its overall condition. It looked rough to me, like it wasn’t getting the right diet. The jesses and the military uniform suggest it’s a mascot, not perhaps in the care of an active falconer who lets it hunt for fresh live food. So I went about improving its disheveled plumage texture and color and improving its soft part coloration, and redrew its wings and tail to make them more understandable to the viewer. (in this photo, the bird's tail is depressed straight down for balance, and the wingtips are a bit disordered).  Mostly, I wanted my bird to look smooth and in perfect feather (wild), which the reference bird is clearly not. Here is a comparison photo to show you what I’m talking about.

 

Compare this longterm captive kestrel with this clearly wild bird, below. Look at the feather coloration and texture of the wild one. There's an intensity of color of the plumage and soft parts that comes from a wild live diet and lots of exercise. There's a smoothness there, a perfect interlocking of barbules, no roughness. This bird is in perfect condition, as it needs to be to survive in the wild. 

Photo by Kenny Diaz, Adobe Stock (used purely for illustrative purposes here)

The most important thing, after satisfying the client's wishes, was to capture kestrel magic. 

I was after something more resembling the condition of the bird in the second photo, though my efforts are pitiful compared to Nature's. The few times I've been close to a wild kestrel--most recently when I was involved with a rescue last winter--I have been astounded by their beauty and intensity. Of course, being so small, that beauty has an elfin quality, as in:  "I can't believe this bird is so beautiful, so perfect and small and colorful!" Their dark eyes spark and glow; their perfect little feet and ceres match in deep egg-yolk yellow, and the combination of brilliant rust, slate blue, peach, and cream, set off by inky black, in their plumage is amongst the most ornate and pleasing of any bird I know. Anyway, I tried, and I can see a million ways that it falls well short of the real thing, but it'll do, I guess.

 

All in all, it was a fun painting to do, a challenge to pull off; to walk that line between what the client asks me to do and what I might have chosen to do. This was more proscribed than the usual private commission, because it was important to the client that his backyard be recognizable. More than that, though, he also knew what he wanted for the bird and even supplied the reference photo. That doesn't happen very often. So my job as an artist who has accepted a specific commission was not to paint whatever I wished. My job was to set aside my own ideas about what would constitute an interesting kestrel painting, and work to make the best composition I could with what I was given. It’s a little like those TV chef challenges where you open up a refrigerator with four ingredients in it and are asked to make a dish of them. I feel that I cooked up something tasty. My client is thrilled with it because it’s faithful to his setting and has just the bird he wanted, and I had fun in my experimental watercolor kitchen. Win/win!

I think that, as a career illustrator, I am probably happier painting the occasional commission than many artists might be. I'm quite used to being asked to deliver a specific scene, behavior, event...it's a challenge I willingly accept. In some ways it's easier, more cut and dried, than dreaming up the most boffo "ideal" painting of a given species. That said, it's also great to have free rein, and artists given free rein tend to be happy artists. My choice is to be happy about whatever I'm doing, because painting watercolors in the comfort of my studio beats any number of alternatives I could name. 

I'll leave you with a case of the warm fuzzies: what it was like to be painting one of my favorite birds for a wonderful client, on a snowy December afternoon. 

              

Bird Watcher's Digest and Me

 It has occurred to me that you might be interested in a brief history of my involvement with Bird Watcher’s Digest, the magazine I have been writing and painting for since 1986. I can’t quite believe it’s been 34 years! 

 

The magazine was launched from a brave notion, using my late in-laws’ retirement savings as they stood in 1978.

Bill Thompson Jr. and Elsa Ekenstierna Thompson, with Pokey. Clearly not 1978; more like 2009 or so. This is the den where a magazine was born. Now they're both gone, and the den is, too.

 My late mother-in-law, Elsa Thompson, took up birding in her 40’s, and thought there should be a digest for birdwatchers, since there was nothing of the kind out there. What a cool idea! It would have been between 1978 and 

1980 that I saw my first issue, featuring Roger Tory Peterson’s sooty terns, at Out of Town Newsstand in Harvard Square. Having only discovered that birding was a thing upon entering college as a lifelong but unconnected birdwatcher in 1976, I could NOT believe there was a magazine devoted to my passion! I remember standing there, reading it, marveling, and wondered if they would ever consider publishing my writing or painting. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t submit anything until 1986; I needed some time to hone my embryonic skills. Plus, the magazine’s interior was still being printed on newsprint when I saw it, and art looks ever so much better on glossy paper. 

My first cover, a stretching ruby-crowned kinglet, was published in 1986. Article after article, most illustrated by my watercolors, followed. I felt like the luckiest person in the world. 

 

My first 7 covers, spanning 1986-1992. I began writing for the magazine almost as soon as I started painting covers. The piping plover from 1988 has a big article about my work conserving piping plovers in Connecticut. There's a lot of personal history in these issues! To wit:

See that redpoll/junco cover, left, bottom row? Bill talked me into painting that for the Jan/Feb 1991 cover. He called me a lot more than he would have needed to, to get the painting over the finish line. By the time it came out on the cover, we were "talking," as my kids say.

 I didn’t meet BWD's (then) Managing Editor, Bill Thompson III until we collided at the World Series of Birding in May, 1990. We were married in 1993. Persuasive guy. 

I look at this photo and think, "Wha ha happen?" 

There followed a series of covers. Below are ones spanning 1993-1999. 

And here's 2000-2011.

Bill Thompson III was Editor and Publisher until he had to leave us in March, 2019. Though Bill’s bank of knowledge and energy was irreplaceable, Editor Dawn Hewitt comes as close as anyone could to filling his Size 12’s. Wendy Clark has added her considerable vision and energy as Publisher. I do my best to lean in and help the staff with anything remotely sciencey, as well as with thorny bird ID’s and bird feeding/housing/gardening advice. And I read every issue for scientific accuracy as well as flow and typos. By the time the magazine goes to press, it’s been by several mighty sharp sets of eyes.

 

I write a column called “True Nature” for every issue, right alongside such luminaries as David Bird, Mark Garland, Alvaro Jaramillo, Al Batt and Scott Weidensaul. Iowa’s fabulous Diane Porter writes frequently for the magazine as well. I also have a column in every issue of Watching Backyard Birds, which comes out in the months that Bird Watcher’s Digest doesn’t. It’s good to write a lot; to have to have something to show for all your rumination. I love sitting down to write a column, to winnow out all the things I see and then gather a lifetime of observations, to knead them all into dough and bake it into a story for our readers.

 

2013-2020.

35 years after that first little kinglet was published, I’ll have my 30th cover on the May/June 2022 issue! I've got something published in most issues, and I still feel like the luckiest person in the world to be affiliated with this magazine.

Here's the body of work as it stands...well, just the covers I've painted over the last 34 years. The articles and columns in many other issues are legion.

It’s pretty darned amazing that Bird Watcher's Digest is still humming along, cranking out excellent content for its beloved and very loyal subscribers. Chalk it up to love and sheer will. Thanks to that demon C-19, everybody’s been working from home since spring 2020—another thing that amazes me no end. HOW CAN IT BE 34 YEARS???

 

I guess what I’m winding up to is, “Why not subscribe now, when Bird Watcher’s Digest is having a half-off subscription sale?” I don’t know how they can give this magazine away for $15 yearly (and only $12 for Watching Backyard Birds!) I guess they’re banking on your loving it as much as I do, once you’ve gotten a load of it. Needless to say, it makes a terrific gift for that bird-loving friend—it can take you to the next birding level fast, wherever you’re starting from.

 

Publisher and Publisher Emeritus. Both worked their entire careers putting out the best bird watching magazine ever.

Oh! Here's that offer. And thank you very much for your indulgence. I hope you've enjoyed this retrospective--color, bird painting and a whole lot of love.

  https://birdwatchersdigest.com/promos/jz-holidaygifts2020.html

 

 

 

 

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

   

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.