revivingKensArt (1 Viewer)

solitaryVSong said:

Valley Green is a part of the Wissahickon Creek in Philadelphia that is accessible by car. Also there's a restaurant there. So the ducks and geese all hang out together waiting for handouts. Thus this is an accurate picture of what I saw in terms of the bird grouping.

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Can't count how many times I was there feeding the ducks as a little girl! You make me quite homesick as you write about the beautiful green spaces in Philly :flyaway:

I am enjoying seeing it all again through your eyes as birder and artist.

Gretchen said:

Can't count how many times I was there feeding the ducks as a little girl! You make me quite homesick as you write about the beautiful green spaces in Philly :flyaway:

I am enjoying seeing it all again through your eyes as birder and artist.

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Hi Gretchen,

What a surprise to find a message from China! I'm happy to bring back memories of Valley Green and the green spaces of Philadelphia to you. It's one of the things that I most love about Philadelphia. I and my wife are not natives but we've both been here over 25 years so I guess that makes us quasi-natives. We live in Roxborough/Manayunk and one of the reasons we moved to that part of Philadelphia is that it is so close to the Wissahickon! It's hard to believe that you're in a major city when you walk along its paths.

I hope that I'll have some more art that is based on birds seen somewhere near the Wissahickon in the months to come. We saw many migrating warblers at Carpenters Woods last weekend but they were just too fast for my slow sketching!! I hope to at least get sketches of a few before migration is over for this year.

Ken

wonderfully balanced composition and gorgeous vibrant colours - a pleasure to see.

nickderry said:

wonderfully balanced composition and gorgeous vibrant colours - a pleasure to see.

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Thanks Nick. After a week or two of disappointing work it's nice to have one I'm happy with!

I've been too busy to get any work done for the last week or so. Finally yesterday I was able to grab a few hours. There wasn't time to get outside so I decided to work from this photo I took of the first Killdeer of spring.

I could have continued in charcoal and pastel which is far more comfortable to me than watercolor but I want to pursue watercolor. I also could have made the Killdeer larger but I liked the water in front of and reeds behind him and wanted to make them an important part of the painting.

Only one problem: I didn't want to do the water or reeds in detail and thought I'd be able to improvise an impression of them. But I always overestimate my ability to improvise an impression, especially in watercolor!

Watercolor remains a learning experience.||

solitaryVSong said:

Watercolor remains a learning experience.||

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. . . for us all, Ken - for us all . . .
This has a rich freshness to it - recalling springtime itself. The curve may be steep, but you're still climbing it. Onwards and upwards.

timwootton said:

. . . for us all, Ken - for us all . . .
This has a rich freshness to it - recalling springtime itself. The curve may be steep, but you're still climbing it. Onwards and upwards.

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Thanks for the encouragement Tim,

Believe me your watercolors set an example of what can be done in watercolor!
Onwards and upwards it is.

lots of exciting things happening in here, the bird sits beautifully as a mass of abstract shapes - which is what plovers such as killdeer are supposed to be, there are colours and textures and I like the composition.

Bravo Ken, this has real boldness to it, tho you can see the battle going on with wc, I can see you are going to win it, and it just adds to the fresh impression of what you are seeing. What matters is making it an honest painting that is true to the moment, which this really is.

Watercolour is so unforgiving that I think it's one of the hardest mediums to control, so bravo to you for continuing on the way to defeating the curve.

Mike

Thanks Nick,Colleen, Mike,

I'm sure that the struggle with watercolor does show here. But best be honest about it. I'm sure eventually it will come easier and the watercolors will take on some ease. Thanks all of you for your encouragement to me as I trek the learning curve!

As I've said before I really think watercolor is a wonderful medium, and plenty of work here shows its possibilities, so it seems worth it to keep working at it.

Colleen, I'm quite happy you find it bold. I sometimes think that I am somewhat bold when I start out, and I know I don't want to seem tentative, but then I feel like the bold housepainter who swiftly paints his way across the floor and suddenly finds himself in the corner with no way out! At that point I have to walk back across the newly painted floor trying to cover up my footprints as I go..........

Just returned from driving 2700 miles to Midwest and back, stopping at Horicon Marsh and Magee Marsh National Wildlife Refuges, arriving to locked doors at the Woodson Museum for the Birds in Art Show, and skimming quickly all that I've missed here. I need to leave for work in minutes but did want to post a couple of things.

I only did two live sketches on the trip and I wasn't going to post them. But reading Tim's Sandhill Crane adventure made me change my mind. So two field sketches of Sandhill Cranes and a Sora, who just wouldn't sit still.

This morning, as an illustration for my blog, I whipped out this watercolor of Solitary Sandpiper and Lesser Yellowlegs among lily pads. It took a very frustrating 15-30 minutes to realize that I was trying to ID two different birds, not just one! I needed to start taking photos before I realized this. The watercolor is based on one of those photos.

Ken what a bummer to get to locked doors! sandhills are very fresh and the watercolor style you are developing is a real treat.

Super work Ken - the colour piece is a beautiful design. This last drawing has bundles of energy - and I have a big soft spot for all things crane-y.

colleenc said:

Ken what a bummer to get to locked doors! sandhills are very fresh and the watercolor style you are developing is a real treat.

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Thanks Colleen. Yes the Woodson Surprise was an unpleasant one indeed. I was sure that they were open on Monday and would have checked except the computer at hotel I was staying at crashed every time I tried to get directons to museum. It was a beautiful day so I and my wife decided to go straight there rather than over to Horicon Marsh, a 2 1/2 hour detour each way. We finally found the place, admired it from outside as we walked up, and then tried a locked door! Not open on Mondays! We both should have realized it but it just never crossed our minds. So I missed seeing your work, John Busby's work, etc.

Once we found door was locked we hopped back in car and sped off to Horicon so we'd get there while there was still a bit of light left for birdwatching. Sandhill cranes and lots of Soras meant we just couldn't leave Horicon again for a trip back to Wassau! So we saw a beautiful museum but only from the outside.

I do HOPE I'm developing a watercolor style. Like you I'm struggling. One day seems a success the next an abysmal failure. But it's such a beautiful medium so we just have to keep at it. I think the fact that I had a strict time limit on yesterday's painting (because I had to head off to work) actually helped me get something that held together as a painting.

timwootton said:

Super work Ken - the colour piece is a beautiful design. This last drawing has bundles of energy - and I have a big soft spot for all things crane-y.

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Thanks Tim,

You would have loved all the Sandhill Cranes that we saw in Wisconsin last week. I just wish I had sense enough to do more drawings of them. Problem was that 50 feet away secretive Soras kept popping out occasionally and I wanted to see them as well. And in same location of soras, exactly the same location that is, both Northern Waterthrush warbler and American Bittern appeared one night. And White Pelicans and Black-Crowned Night Herons flew overhead. It was hard to concentrate on anything!!

I do hope to do some work based on the photos I took of the cranes. Hopefully at least some of them will be half as successful as your great crane watercolors of last week.

I hope you walked the grounds, they have some beautiful sculpture there.

re the time limit, I find it really helps keep me moving and not fussing over things, 15 min was really good to start, now I'm setting up 30 for a little more detail time. But having one at all is the help, one of the great beauties of the medium is the spontaneous happenings. Still our friends across the pond have an advantage of a long tradition of English watercolors going back to Cotman and Turner, maybe it's something in the air there.

colleenc said:

Still our friends across the pond have an advantage of a long tradition of English watercolors going back to Cotman and Turner, maybe it's something in the air there.

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Ah but we have Winslow Homer!!, and the American who rarely lived here, John Singer Sargent. I do love the transparent watercolors of Winslow Homer, when he dropped all opaque paint about 1880 or so. Sargent can be far too facile at times but still you have to admire his enthusiasm for getting down just what was in front of him and not being shy about trying every new method under the sun. Sames goes for Homer in terms of making up methods as he went along. I'd really recommend a recent book from Art Institute of Chicago on watercolors of Homer. It has a lot on technique. Normally I shy away from technique books but this one really seemed pretty good; you could see all the various techniques he tried. But mainly the reason to buy it is just the great reproductions.

That said I have been looking for a good book on English watercolorists, like Cotman and Turner so if anyone has any recommendations, don't be shy!!

Sad to say we didn't tour the sculpture gardens. After wasting all that time to drive there I was just too eager to have something to show for it. I'm sure we would have enjoyed it but I knew I had a 3 hour drive ahead of me and wanted to get on with it quickly so that we'd still have some time to bird Horicon Marsh before it got dark. It was well worth it! We had a good 90 minutes when we got back.

I did have the BIA catalog waiting in the mail when I got home. And the one work that just knocked me out was that of Jonsson. It's somewhat foreign to me and maybe that's why I'm really impressed by people who seem to say: I see this in front of me and as huge and impressive as it is, I'm going to get it down on paper anyway. It's not too much to try for though mere mortals wouldn't do so. I don't think most people would look at that huge landscape and the penguins and say I can get that all in the painting and still have room left over. Just really impressive. I sure do envy you being able to meet him and see him work. Like Jo though I'm unhappily surprised not to see a Barry Van Dusen. And of course I would have like to see your work in person, and especially that of Busby! Have to wait until next year when I go to see my own work, I hope, along with yours and that of Van Dusen, Jonsson, et al.

Well you can hardly count Sargent who was educated entirely in Europe, and didn't set foot here for the first time until he was grown up. His mother did beautiful watercolors, so maybe that is a main influence. The "Englishiness" I refer to most is a quality of light, that to me anyway, is very different than Am. watercolors, including Homer who is one of the best, the color is more bold and the light a bit less subtle.

Well this is a surprise: a Wall Street Journal article on the Birds in Art show with two Busby reproductions online http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204518504574417023686769120.html#mod=article-outset-box

WSJ charges for some content so I'm not sure if this link will be available to everyone. I hope so. The article isn't spectacular but it is nice to see the show covered in a major newspaper. And you can't beat the Busbys!! Actually there's a slideshow that I missed. So eleven works are visible for anyone who didn't get the catalog or see the show(most I think).