The Pember Collection
A Victorian glass and cherry cabinet full of nests and eggs, collected in the late-1800s, stretches 15-feet from end to end at the Pember Museum of Natural History in Granville, NY. I’ve been going to the museum once a year for the last 10 years and I never tire of that case. The variety of the collection astounds me; I will never exhaust its sketching possibilities. I spent two hours absorbed the details of 125 year old nests before running out of time on my recent visit. If only the birds knew what a legacy they left.
My advice for sketching at a museum: check in upon arrival to introduce yourself and ask whether there are any restrictions. Keep your supplies contained—pencil, pen, and sketchbook with a small set of watercolors or colored pencils work well. Recognize when other museum goers, and especially kids, want to look at what you are observing. If you’re comfortable and people seem interested, invite them to have a look at your artwork. I’ve met a number of aspiring young artists in museums and always enjoy encouraging them.
The Pember Collection- A gallery of sketches dating to 2006 (click to view larger)
ATTN sketchers/painters/photographers:
If you love sketching or photographing birds and nature, want to improve your skills, and have a fun week exploring the beautiful rocky coast of Maine, check out Arts and Birding, a five-day workshop at the Hog Island Audubon Camp, June 11-16, 2017. I am the program director and one of the instructors and I guarantee a great experience! Beginners to advanced participants are welcome—we work in a very collaborative, positive atmosphere. Register by Dec. 20 using the “EARLYBIRD” discount and save $50. Get Details >
Holding On
I appreciate the last vestiges of autumn: curled beech leaves in barren woods; uneaten grapes still hanging from tangled vines; oak leaves that refuse to fall. They hold on until the bitter end. And why not? Why not go for one last day of warm sunshine; one final chance at glorious existence before letting go. Wouldn’t you?
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Making Muffins
What could be better on a cold Sunday in November than baking, eating, and painting muffins? And while there’s no recipe for painting muffins, I scanned this several times while in progress to share how I approached it.
I painted this on Fabriano soft press 140lb watercolor paper in a handmade journal, using a limited palette of alizarin crimson, quinacridone gold, and phthalo blue. That’s not a combination I typically use, but I wanted to try it. I also added a little burnt sienna toward the end. Eat, paint, enjoy!
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The Things We Take for Granted
I take the beauty of fall for granted. That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate it or that I am not awed by its glory. Only that I take for granted that it will be so, year after year. For those of us who live in the Northeast, it is a given that winters will be cold and long, that spring will burst forth in birdsong and flowers, that summer will be prized for its heat and fullness, and that autumn will complete the year with a cloak of gold.
I painted this page on location with a fellow sketcher who grew up in the Middle East. She marveled at leaves the way people who live in warm places marvel at snow when they see it for the first time. It surprised me; I had never given it thought. So here’s to a fine afternoon sketching and a valuable reminder to be grateful for things I take for granted.
Watercolor, Strathmore- 400 series sketchbook; click to view larger
About the technique– This sketchbook page was done with a watercolor technique known as “negative painting.”
- I first painted a wet-in-wet wash of primary colors (ultramarine blue, alizarin crimson, and Hansa yellow medium).
- When dry, I sketched an outline of the main leaves and began to paint around them with graded washes using combinations of the same three colors to create additional leaf shapes and patterns. Using a simple palette helps to ensure that the layers don’t get muddy.
- I continued to add more layers of paint, creating additional detail and a greater sense of depth. It’s kind of a dizzying process and you can easily get lost in it. The trick is stopping before tinkering too much and losing the spontaneous effects of the wet washes.
Watercolor, Strathmore- 400 series sketchbook
The Sun is Rising Yet
Today, I don’t know how to assuage grief; stem loss; draw hope. What color do you use when a new day dawns gray and stark and you no longer know your country?
So I walk streets littered with leaves, and wander through the graveyard looking for answers among stones. Here– a veteran, there– a mother, a child. Lives engraved in names and dates. On one of my favorites, these words: Change upon change, the sun is rising yet.
And then I come home to begin again, and start with the simple act of filling the bird feeders.
Gone, but not forgotten
The woods are falling silent. Save for the call of jays and crows and the occasional chatter of chickadees and nuthatches, our songbirds have all flown to summer in the southern hemisphere. So, while it may seem odd to be painting yellow warblers in November, I am not quite ready to take up brown and blue paint and focus on winter birds just yet. This painting began in the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, where I recently sketched yellow warblers perched in display cases. Back at home, I worked from those studies, a variety of photos, and a previous painting of dogwoods to create this piece…a bit of spring to tide us over the long winter ahead until these little beauties return.
Yellow Warbler (female), watercolor on Fabriano soft press 140lb paper, 6”x8”; click to view larger
Arts & Birding– If you like birds, nature, and art, and are looking for fun workshop to improve your skills in either sketching/painting or photography, join me in Maine next June 11-16 for Arts & Birding. This workshop takes place on a beautiful island on the Maine Coast at the Hog Island Audubon Camp. Registration is open and spaces are filling quickly. This is a wonderful place to invest in yourself and your art!
Many thanks to Discover WordPress for featuring Drawn In this week and thanks to all of you who signed on to follow me! Your enthusiasm, nice comments, and likes are terrific!
Tribute to Bates
For years I’ve been fascinated by the work of artists who traveled with the great natural history expeditions of the 17-and-1800s. Those artists worked in the most extreme conditions and with the most exciting of assignments: to catalog the flora and fauna of newly discovered continents. Among my favorites are Maria Sibylla Merian, who exquisitely captured flowers and insects of Surinam (1699-1701), Sydney Parkinson, who crossed the Pacific with the Endeavor and left behind nearly 1,000 finished and unfinished botanical paintings and sketches upon his death at sea (1768-1771), and the prolific Henry Walter Bates, who filled notebook after notebook with insects of the Amazon (1848-1862).
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I’ve always wanted to do a page like this. I started during modest travels of my own, sketching in the cramped quarters of an airplane. I finished back at home, using specimens I had photographed at a natural history museum. No comparison to the working conditions of the masters, but a nod to those artists just the same. And if you’ve ever wondered how much variety you can get from different combinations of browns and blues, paint moths.
Henry Walter Bates, Insects of the Amazon
Henry Walter Bates, 1862
Runner Beans
The last garden vegetables left to harvest include a few scarlet runner beans that I’ve had my eye on since their red flowers bloomed in August. I didn’t make time to paint them then, but didn’t want to miss them altogether.
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I sketched directly in ink and then added watercolor to the foreground layer. I went back in and painted an additional layer of light watercolor vines and beans to add more depth. The shadows are really important to making this work because they create the illusion of light and depth. Done in Stillman and Birn Zeta journal, 8.5 x 11.
Testing
“Don’t go over to the dark side!” warned a fellow watercolor artist when I mentioned wanting to try acrylics. But here I am, wading in. A familiar subject, a new approach. Using acrylics made me appreciate the lightness and delicacy of watercolor and the beauty of drawing that goes with it. But it also made me envious of the ease with which you can rework the paint and blend color on canvas.
Acrylic on gessobord, 8×8″, click to view larger
This painting is dedicated to the Artist Nest Group in Anacortes, Washington, who took risks, experimented, and pushed themselves repeatedly throughout the four-day workshop I taught last month. Rest assured, I won’t be trading my watercolors any time soon, but it’s good to try new things every now and then.
Fall Fruits
I went on a “sketch crawl” at the Connecticut College Arboretum last weekend expecting to draw trees. Instead, the “crawl” felt more like a race, as we were given 15 minutes to draw in a particular location before moving to the next site. Between hiking, settling in and packing up, there was precious little time for more than a very loose sketch and a hasty wash of color at each location. It was a good exercise, but I quickly abandoned the idea of doing a detailed tree study in favor of focusing on simpler plants.
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Back at home,the warm-toned fall fruits and foliage just seemed too stark on white paper. I finished the page by adding the background wash of yellow ochre, which set off the baneberry’s white fruit nicely and helped to pull together the separate elements.
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