When I got there the bird was standing up.
INK OUT OF GROOVES MOKU HANGA HOW TO
I thought about bringing my camera or sketchbook over to my neighbors but thought it more important to get there and check the health and ID of bird, not that I would have had much of an idea as to how to help it.
We've been lucky enough to have them as visitors during the last couple of years. They're just starting to move through and some may stay. When I went over to check I found a beautiful Hermit Thrush.Īctually we'd seen our first Hermit Thrush of the fall yesterday at the Andorra section of Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. So just as I finish my latest post about taking liberties with the birds I see and paint I hear a neighbor yell out to another neighbor that a bird has just flown into his window. When that happens I often feel like I need to do some sort of doodling, sort of thoughtless art, to warm myself and figure out where I want to go. And my poor little basil seedlings, planted very late as you can guess, may survive long enough to give a bit of basil flavor to November and perhaps December meals.īetween this type of winterizing work, preparing frames and mats for the MRAC show, and getting end of warm weather birding in before it's too late I haven't done much in the way of art. So my many choi seedlings will I hope be able to grow to a usable state.
They're not perfect but they look like they should keep the cold out. I spent the last few days using a Stanley handheld multiplane to dado out grooves in some 2x2s to put the window into. But they need a wooden frame to work as tops for the cold frame.
INK OUT OF GROOVES MOKU HANGA WINDOWS
These are metal windows that I picked up off the street years ago thinking that they might come in handy. Today just in time for the cold and snow I finished making some new windows for our cold frame. Just as the sparrows are winterizing I've been doing the same, along with my wife, around the house and garden. And you never know what surprises you might get. It's a very quick way to change a drawing into a painting, or at least a wash drawing. It's extraordinary how much the ink runs when water touches it. And you do get more familiar with the birds you're sketching.įor this I'm using a Bic 537R ball point pen. But just as true is the fact that you might capture some sense of life. For instance you may need to put a head on a sparrow, as I did at lower left. You're forced to really think about how the bird is put together. This may seem either silly or masochistic. Or, wait until another bird takes a similar pose.
I need to try to remember the rest of the bird. Often I can only get one line down, like the breast in the female at lower left, before the bird is gone. Just as I start one another sparrow lands on or near him or her and starts fighting. When there are a lot of them feeding frantically I can assure you that they don't sit still for long. The sketch above is based on sparrows at my window. We often don't get snow until January! And yet that's the current forecast.īut the House Sparrows at my studio window feeder looked like they might be preparing for snow. I knew that it couldn't be true - 6 to 10 inches of snow this weekend for Philadelphia. It's too easy to make serious mistakes when working too long. I wanted to keep working on it but prudence told me not to. You can see that there is a dark area of background that I haven't touched yet. How do I get various tones? Especially if I'm only use one color as with this? Well it has to be one with marks of one sort or another. As I've mentioned before it's always a bit of a shock to go to the linear medium of block printing. We saw this lifer Black Tern at Cape May Point State Park last August. It looks like something I'll continue to explore. But so far I can't complain about the appearance. I do seem to go through more ink with this. As with most things though I wonder what the catch is. No smell at all, no use of oil and simple cleanup. What a pleasure it is to clean up with just water. I did an ink, watercolor and gouache version of it a week or two ago. Above is version 10 or so of a new print of a Black Tern amidst Forster's and Common Terns. So a few weeks ago I bought a tube of water-based block printing ink. Then there is the problems of oil based paints and solvents. And that may explain it: it was an exhausting process. The last one was the 9 color reduction print of the Blackburnian Warbler. It's been a very long time since I did a linoleum block print.
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