JTMB's Bird Art (2 Viewers)

Really nice. I also wouldn't change too much. I like it how it is. I'm not daring enough to step away from acrylic. I like being able to cover my mistakes!

John. I agree with those who propose a bit more contrast on the bird. But, that is a BIT more. You are quite right to go cautiously! It is already a beautiful piece..edit it with great care.

solitaryVSong said:

Isn't amazing how after years of quickly IDing a bird you assume that it won't be all that difficult to draw?

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It comes as a rude awakening doesn't it!

JTMB said:

A wonderful side benefit of the sketching was seeing behavior that I would likely not have seen but for the focus required for drawing. One of the herons caught a good-sized frog while I watched and quite quickly the unlucky frog was down the hatch and the heron's food needs were met for some time.

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And that's the hub of it I reckon, never a truer a word spoken. Sketching birds brings such a different level of engagement and makes one so much more intimate with the subject - that said, my own advice to myself would probably be, don't worry if my stuff ain't Busby or Lars, because all the basic and really naff fieldnotes I've taken over the years when birding, either to confirm later the ID of something, or whether it's because it's a rarity or lifer, have also brought me to that level of engagement - and that's the sheer joy of it all. If some good 'art' comes out of that eventually, I think that would be the bonus!!

Keep up the good work John - you've already got the basics well and truly under your belt and now you're jumping through hoops. Your not lacking artistic talent and the deer and squirrel paintings for example just go to prove that the hardest 'natural' subject matter to draw are BIRDS because they are the hardest to really observe!

Soliciting Input...

Hi folks,

Well, my woodpecker-in-the-nesthole painting was run by my watercolor class this morning, and taking input from those fellow students, the instructor and folks in this forum, here are the possible modifications. It would be very educational for me to hear reactions from the forum (since the watercolor class isn't composed of primarily bird artists or birders) to the possibilities before I make my final decision about what to do and not do here.

1.) Add some hints of the sky color into the shadow side of the tree.

2.) Show some small amount of detail in the (currently) very dark nest hole to the top and right of the woodpecker.

3.) Darken the blacks on the woodpecker, in selected areas to get more modeling of the bird's form.

4.) Darken the shadows on the front of the woodpecker and its cast shadow on the tree (confirming what several folks here previously suggested - and one thing I'm pretty sure I will do, albeit carefully and incrementally).

5.) Add more blue into the bird's cast shadows, and blue sky color was again suggested as a way to help unify the color harmony.

Everyone who has seen the painting loves the tree and specifically the tree bark. Maybe I should become a tree bark specialist and to h#ll with all these difficult birds. :-O

Thanks in advance.

John,

Take on only the advice your heart trusts! Even mine!

And never give up! B

I agree with those things, esp the blues in the bark and in the shadows to bring in more atmosphere and light.

phil baber said:

John,

Take on only the advice your heart trusts! Even mine!

And never give up! B

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I have to agree with Phil on this. All of the points from the critique are plausible but I wouldn't necessarily follow them. When I was in graduate school I used to have two or three faculty come in and offer critiques, almost always contradictory. Then there'd be a full class critique with more opinions. One of the more memorable was 'Your paintings look like Naugahyde.'

In the end I just had to take a deep breath, consider what everyone said, and then go with what seemed right to me. But this was always a difficult process. All of which can be summed up by saying: don't pay all that much attention to what others say. It may be helpful. But often I just found it confusing.

Thanks, Ken, and yes although I haven't done art too long yet, I've already figured this out in the college classes I took a year ago. It is good to hear opinions from folks who you trust and whose work you like, though. It can be even worse than you describe with philosophical attitudes of instructors. On another website, I remember reading a post last year of a fellow going to a university in the UK who was interested in doing realistic work, was highly motivated and who had done a lot of self-study. He ran into several professors (probably tenured so without need to care what anyone else thought or did) and a departmental attitude as whole that so frustrated him he was considering not going back for his second year. The one classic professorial quote I remembered from his post was when an always-condescending professor told him very seriously the classic gem, "Skill is the enemy of genius." when critiquing the student's work. (Which in that context, I translate to "I'm not as skilled as you are, so don't you dare demonstrate that...however, I have defined myself to be a genius and you'll never live up to my lofty self-vision.")

The analogy I'm very familiar with is from music. I've played semi-professionally (i.e. not full time, but we get paid when we do play) since the early 70's and have recorded a number of projects with multiple bands. I learned a couple truths over those decades - 1.) Usually nobody in the band likes the result when they first hear it shortly after the recording, and some absolutely despise it. This comes from musical perfection sometimes but universally also from being so focused on looking for 'mistakes' that you are incapable initially of judging the whole work in context. As with paintings, you can listen right away, but never make final judgments about it until enough time passes for perspective. 2.) Family members, especially non-musical ones, are the absolute worst people to critique a recording. Some don't want to say anything critical and so compliment even when undeserved, and some (usually the least musically knowledgeable of the group) will offer volumes of harsh but often unfounded criticism. 3.) Despite the previous two points, there are gems of wisdom and truth hidden in all the volume, waiting to be found and incorporated. You have to listen to it all to find them, though...! :-O

John the skill comment actually has become something of a prevalent theory now circulating in art departments, the critics call it the "deskilling" of art, for the reason he cites having skill supposedly gets in the way of creativity....so now in museums( supported by our money) and galleries and on the wall of collectors is so much crap called art .....I wonder when the call will come "the emperor has no clothes" They seem to forget the great geniuses of modern art were highly skilled in realism when that modern era started. Picasso could draw like an angel at 13, taught by his academic father.

In no other profession would anyone consider deskilling helpful, would you like a deskilled plumber or doctor?

Just been admiring the Ring-necks, John. These are very good efforts. Wildfowl are a totally diffferent ball game to, say, passerines but they hold a unique challenge for me, plus they are always available - very important. Try, when practicing, to draw swimming birds approaching and moving away that still look like they're floating, plus those heads, bills and eyes from oblique angles provide all sorts of conundrums - great fun!

Stick at it, sir.

Russ

colleenc said:

John the skill comment actually has become something of a prevalent theory now circulating in art departments, the critics call it the "deskilling" of art, for the reason he cites having skill supposedly gets in the way of creativity....so now in museums( supported by our money) and galleries and on the wall of collectors is so much crap called art .....I wonder when the call will come "the emperor has no clothes" They seem to forget the great geniuses of modern art were highly skilled in realism when that modern era started. Picasso could draw like an angel at 13, taught by his academic father.

In no other profession would anyone consider deskilling helpful, would you like a deskilled plumber or doctor?

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By the same adage.

To play a piano badly, really well, you first must know how to play a piano, really well. :cat:

Cherry-pick any advice that suits you. And do not let advice colour your Art.

And don't follow my advice if it doesn't seem right! Advice should always have the "ability to choose" written into it...As far as I know...that is a GIVEN!

Hey! Just be careful what you say about "Tenured Professors". I was one once (but in a Forestry School, not Art Department.)

If you took all the suggested changes everyone has made to you and did all of them, would it even still be your painting?? Pick and choose which suggestions you like, dump the rest, and if you are pleased with the painting--it's done.

sfrissell said:

and if you are pleased with the painting--it's done.

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that would mean 95% of my work is undone!:-O

Thanks for the input, everyone. Still mulling over what I want to do (or not).

Dark-eyed Junco (and assorted other) sketches

Well, I decided it was time to jump into the deep end of the pool again and try to stay afloat for at least a short time by doing some more sketches from live birds. Today was a good day to do that, because we got an uncharacteristic early snowfall (about 4 inches/10 cm at the house right now and still coming down) for us (actually, any significant snowfall in the winter is unusual for us). As a result, the hordes of wintering birds in our yard had trouble finding the seed I scatter on the ground each morning for the ground feeders and birds that normally don't go after the hanging feeders were trying to get some seed that way. So I packed down the snow right outside our kitchen nook window, and scraped the snow off the birdbath there as well, then scattered a bunch of seed about.

The most numerous species generally each year reliably is the Dark-eyed Junco. On a typical winter day, I'll have around 40 of them in the back yard. Sometimes Pine Siskins or American Goldfinches will outnumber them, but both the latter two are not around much this winter. House Finches are also pretty numerous. So...I grabbed the pencil and sketchbook and scribbled away as they came in and attacked the seed. A couple House Finches pop up here as well, as does a Varied Thrush (rare throughout most of the US, occuring only in the west, so always a nice sight in the yard) which sat briefly on a neighbor's conifer - it left right away, so that sketch is mostly from not-so-good memory.

Although the DEJU's are pretty hyper like all little birds, there were enough around, and the seed kept them in the same vicinity - although still in constant motion - for long enough to do a little better on the sketches than I usually manage. The journal used here is 14 x 11 inches.

Another good learning experience added to the ledger...!

Now, that's a fine breakfast for me tomorrow. When I check it again!

Beautiful little "hard-won" sketchings! Very nice indeed!

phil baber said:

Now, that's a fine breakfast for me tomorrow. When I check it again!

Beautiful little "hard-won" sketchings! Very nice indeed!

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Phil says it well. Many field sketches are indeed 'hard-won'. It just doesn't come easy. But the more you do it the more it does get easy. And the longer we all 'stay afloat'. I particularly like the last one, walking toward the tail. All the pages show that you're observing, even if like mine, the hand doesn't yet perfectly put down what you're observing.

I always enjoy seeing these. I think like many things there's a long stretch where it just seems work, with not as much reward as you'd like. Then one day, boom, you start liking it. There's more reward than pain and work. Then I think it becomes easier and just fun.

Cooper's Hawk

Thanks Phil and Ken. I always have fun doing the life drawing, regardless of the results - and I am getting better at it. Just need a lot more miles on the tires at it so I'm continuing to do it.

Here is a quick and small (9 x 8 inches) watercolor with some gouache of a juvenile Cooper's Hawk who frequented the feeders that I had up at my old place of employment a couple years ago. This one has an hour and a half or so in it. The odd size is that it was originally done on a 9 x 12 inch sheet, but the composition worked better with this crop. I will probably try to do another one of these taking more time now that I've done what amounted to a quick study first.

Great stuff, John! It's so encouraging to see you tackling such difficult subjects. More power to your elbow.....and more heavy snow (and food!).

Russ

Ouch! Missed the Coopers Hawk by seconds! You've done an excellent job capturing that facial expression. It's difficult accurately portraying that 'glare', plus if drawing the bill, cere and eye and orbital ridge isn't right you can easily end up with something looking 'nice' rather than menacing! This has been done really well, though.

Russ