Deep Dive
I had the privilege of doing a deep dive into two incredible collections at Scripps Institution of Oceanography while visiting California last week. The Marine Vertebrate Collection contains two million preserved fish specimens representing 5,600 species. The benthic invertebrates include 800,000 specimens and 7,600 species. These have been collected over decades from diverse marine habitats, including coral reefs, seamounts, hydrothermal vents, hydrocarbon seeps, the abyssal plain, and deep trenches. If you don’t mind dead creatures in glass jars, it’s awesome.
The curators of both collections gave me time to wander through the collections and set up spaces in their labs for me to paint. I could have spent my entire vacation there, but then I would have missed walking the beach and poking in tide pools, birdwatching in coastal wetlands, and exploring the desert. Those sketches are coming soon.
The colors and patterns of moray eels, though faded out of water, remain spectacular.
I had no idea what this was when I selected it; I just knew I’d never seen anything like it. As it turns out, few people have, since it is a marine worm that lives in deep, cold Antarctic waters.
To learn more: Watch this video to go behind the scenes of the Benthic Invertebrate Collection or visit the Scripps collection website.
I have online and in person classes coming up– check them out on the Workshops page.
Lasting Construction
The Eastern Towhee is a bird of forest edges and shrubby fields where they scratch around on the ground for seeds, fruits, grains, and insects. I see them occasionally foraging under our shrubs and I hear them frequently in spring and summer calling from the brushy field bordering our property. What I’ll never see is their nest in the wild, which is always well concealed on the ground. Hence, I put the towhee on my short list of nests to pull from the shelves when I visited the NYS Museum ornithology collection in 2024. This one is a perfect construction of grapevine bark and small twigs. Built by the female in about five days with the intention of lasting a season, this one is more than 125 years old.
Tips & Techniques– While I like the energy inherent in sketches where time is limited, I sometimes lament the sloppiness that can come with it. In contrast, I find it satisfying to work slowly and see what I can achieve by being more careful. This piece is clearly in the slow category. Try working both ways. It will give you options for picking the approach that suits your time and the subject at hand, and push you to become comfortable with both.
The Art of the Bird— If you’d like to learn more about sketching and painting nests (as well as eggs and feathers), check out my upcoming online class, The Art of the Bird. Starting Tuesday, April 1, this 2-hour class is every other week through the beginning of May through Winslow Art Center.
Believing in Beauty
The transformation from caterpillar to butterfly is one of nature’s many small miracles. I was beautifully reminded of it last week during a visit to a butterfly conservancy, where fluttering wings in stunning colors and patterns flickered and floated around us. I found myself drawn to the stillness of the chrysalis display, where hundreds of jewel-like and homely pupa hung. Two butterflies had recently emerged. They seemed like a promise to all of us who have no idea where life is headed but still believe in the possibility of enduring beauty.
Tips & Techniques- This journal page takes advantage of an add on flap to extend the view. I was really intrigued with the large chrysalises on the left, but didn’t know what came out of them until it was nearly time to leave the conservatory. Because there wasn’t room on the page to add the owl butterfly, I decided to paint it on a separate sheet to add it as a flap that would reinforce the concept of transformation. At each stage of painting this piece, I doubted whether it would come together. I kept adding and adding– another pupa, more leaves, another layer of paint, more text– until finally I could see its own transformation and emergence.
Get Sketching!
It’s that time of year when I’m eager to put pen to paper, but cold, gray days dampen my enthusiasm for going outside. It’s the perfect time for my annual pilgrimage to the Pember Museum of Natural History in Granville, NY. Open just a few hours on Saturdays, I arrive and get to work quickly. There are so many choices amidst the wealth of specimens, but I’m always drawn first to the nests and eggs. From there, I branch out to birds and insects. I focus intently, keep my pen moving, and build a page while the clock ticks down. Closing time comes too soon, but I can’t complain. The museum has worked its magic once again.
Tips & Techniques- If you are looking for motivation or inspiration to sketch on location and need some help to get going, look no further than The Artist’s Guide to Sketching by James Gurney and Thomas Kinkade. Originally published in 1982, and now expanded and remastered, the book feels both timely and timeless. I received an advanced copy, dove in, and came out eager to try new materials and subjects. The Artist Guide to Sketching is part how to sketch and part call to sketch. There are plenty of tips for choosing materials and tackling challenges, as well as techniques for drawing people, capturing motion, studying nature, creating mood, and exploring with your sketchbook.
What I especially appreciated was the guide’s affirmation for those of us who already love to sketch but sometimes feel like it is an underappreciated art rather than fundamental to artmaking for beginners and masters alike. Find out more here.
Coming up! If you want to learn more about sketching bird eggs, nests, and feathers, check out my upcoming online class The Art of the Bird, starting April 1st at Winslow Art Center.
Perched
While the weather is frightfully cold and icy, I’m content to perch at my desk to paint. And speaking of perched, I’m having a great time teaching Birds and Words online at Winslow Art Center. Participants have been hard at work practicing lettering, layouts, and different ways to put birds together with words, quotes, and poems. This week we worked on perching birds on letters—a fun way to shine the spotlight on our avian neighbors and record what birds are hanging out and surviving the cold this February.
Tips & Techniques– Watercolor is notoriously challenging for correcting mistakes. Sometimes you can lift out paint, but it’s not uncommon to make things worse by scrubbing too much. I’ve also seen people try to paint over mistakes with too heavy a hand resulting in an overworked piece. So when I noticed that I had accidentally dropped a blob of blue on my “2025” I decided it might be best just to leave it. If you’re not sure what to do with mistakes, take a break and then come back fresh and evaluate your options: leave, lift, rework, cover over, or start again.
Acrobats in the Freezing Wind
I remember the first time I saw a starling, now at least 35 years ago. I was in a bank parking lot and a small flock was strutting and pecking around on the lawn. I thought they were such extraordinary birds—as Mary Oliver writes, “chunky and noisy but with stars in their black feathers”—and I excitedly went home to look up my find. When I discovered they were ordinary European starlings, I felt foolish. If I was going to get to know birds, I was going to have to do better.
Now here I am, all these years later, revisiting my foolishness. I see starlings gathered at the edge of snowy and stubbled cornfields. And then they lift off in unison, dancing across the sky — “acrobats in the freezing wind” — extraordinary after all.
Tips & Techniques- Starlings look black and brown from a distance, but they have a remarkable variety of color up close, and especially during the breeding season. While you could paint them using black paint, you would lose the vibrance and variety achieved with color mixes that yield richer darks. I used masking fluid for the white markings and then painted several layers of alizarin crimson, ultramarine, burnt sienna, and veridian watercolor to convey the iridescent purples and greens. Once the masking fluid was removed, I toned down some of the whites on the underside with a pale and loose wash of these same colors, and used them again to suggest the murmuration across the page.
From the Collection
I’m taking advantage of bitterly cold days to paint a few bird nests that I’ve wanted to spend time with from the collection of the New York State Museum in Albany. Maybe that seems like an odd thing—spending time with a bird nest—but I find that when I am doing a detailed drawing and painting like this, I can’t help but think about the bird that made it, the young that fledged from it, the materials it is made of, the weather it survived, and the person who collected it. In this case, the solitary vireo and its offspring are but an echo across generations of birds. But here is this gem, beautifully decorated with strips of birch bark, lichen, paper wasp nest, and soft plant fibers, and here I am, happy to bring into the light once again.
Tips & Techniques- Drawn in ink with a Micron 005 pen and painted in watercolor with a touch of white gouache on New York Central Art Supply 140lb, hot pressed, 100% cotton watercolor paper. I bought a block of this paper from Jerry’s Artarama after being given a sample pack. I find texture and absorbency of this paper are a dream to work on. If you’ve struggled with other hot press papers, you might try this one.
Goldenrod Dancers
Slow drawing is just my speed this weekend. I was laid low this week by a terrible cold, and I’ve barely had energy to do anything but rest on the couch. I was glad I felt up to sitting at my desk yesterday and today to be absorbed in the curled and complex leaves of goldenrod that was stunted by the goldenrod bunch gall midge. I loved just turning off everything else—the cough, the sore throat, the impending snow, the projects that didn’t get done this week—and just drawing. This may get a bit of watercolor, or not, but that’s a decision for another day.
Tips & Techniques– Those of you who have followed me for a while know that goldenrod galls are a perennial subject. What made this different was the paper—it’s 140lb Fabriano soft press watercolor paper. Soft press is hard to find and only comes in sheets. It’s right in between hot and cold press paper, so it has just a bit of texture and behaves well when adding watercolor. The texture and absorbency of the paper doesn’t allow a Micron 005 pen to glide smoothly across it, but it makes the pen feel more like a pencil when shading and gives the drawing an Old-World feel. Always good to mix it up!
Becoming part of the silence
I love this quote by Irish writer Robert Lynd. “In order to see birds, it is necessary to become part of the silence.” He seems to have understood something profoundly true. Though we may see birds every day—by happenstance or on purpose– really knowing birds requires being quiet enough to enter their world. Unseen. Unobtrusive. Observant. I can honestly admit that I hardly do it enough. But when it happens, whether for just a moment or an hour, it’s a special thing.
Tips & Techniques- If you are doing a piece like this, my advice is to take your time. You’ll be making a lot of decisions: choosing the quote, the bird(s), the text style, size and spacing, the colors, and the paper. Play around to see what works before setting on a final design. I tend to work a little at a time, so that I can experiment with different elements. I chose New York Central Art Supply 140lb hot pressed watercolor paper and used 02 and 005 Pigma Micron pens for the black text. My palette was burnt sienna, yellow ochre, burnt umber, and cobalt blue for the Carolina wren and cobalt and a touch of burnt sienna for the word BIRD.
If you’d like to learn more and try your hand at Birds & Words, check out my new online class at Winslow Art Center starting in February.
On the Perch
“You’re on the perch,” my former boss would often say to me when I was at my computer. I was working for the Audubon Society then, and the phrase was part greeting, part acknowledgment of the task at hand. Though my work has changed, I’m still facing a computer most days and, thankfully, on the perch at my art desk most evenings.
This week, I am experimenting with two of my favorite things: birds and words. There are endless possibilities—the fun is figuring out which combination of birds, hand-drawn letters, layout, and words will give me the feeling I want to convey. My desk is strewn with calligraphy books, pens, and papers. Sometimes, I start with the birds, sometimes the words.
It’s enough to fill a long winter on the perch.
Tips & Techniques– If this sort of thing appeals to you, join me for BIRDS & WORDS, my new online class at Winslow Art Center starting Tuesday, February 4, 2025. Try your hand at combining text with artwork to lend greater meaning to your sketchbook pages or artwork. We’ll practice both hand-lettering techniques and drawing and painting birds in ink and watercolor. Each class will introduce a different approach to adding text, including large letters, poetry, and quotes.
Drawn In 