In Which I Re-Learn A Lesson I Already Knew

The lesson is this:  ALWAYS invest in quality materials!  Student-grade art supplies are not worth the money, and you will be much happier with the results you get if you spend a bit more and get artist/professional grade supplies.

I've been working in watercolor almost exclusively for many years, and certainly do spend the money on good quality materials -- usually Winsor-Newton paints and Fabriano or Arches 140lb cold-press paper, and good brushes.  Very much worth it.  But today I wanted to try a picture using acrylics, and the only ones I had on had were either student grade or worse, craft paint.  Goodness, it was a struggle to use them!  The craft paint was too thin, and the other paints were old and often too thick or gummy.  I didn't have good brushes, either.  I persevered, and am happy with the results thus far, though am dreading trying to finish the piece with such horrible paints.

I'm sure it took me about three times as long to get as far as I did as it would have if I'd used new, artist-grade paints.  I don't use acrylics often enough to justify the expense -- at least, that's always been my excuse for not making the investment.  I'm pondering whether I want to pursue more acrylic work.  We shall wait and see!

Common Merganser, early stages:

I took this photo at Cannon Beach in Ecola Creek last summer.  The bird was fairly far off, and I lost some detail with the long zoom.  The light was fairly good though parts of the bird, especially the head, are a bit too dark/shadowed.  So I tried to lighten that up a bit.  I hope to take a stab at the body tomorrow -- I do have some slightly better quality acrylics in the grays/blue-grays there, so maybe it won't be as frustrating.

Here's a close-up:

Something New

For today's Adventure in Art, I took a stab at using pastels (both soft and pencil) which I haven't used before.  I had a nice photo of a juvenile Pied-billed Grebe which I chose because it had a limited color palette, on the theory that would be easier when using new materials.

Things started out well, and I liked how easy it was to blend pastels, but I ran into trouble with the bill, where the tiny details were difficult to get right.  The pencils did not sharpen well and kept breaking off points, and I didn't have quite the right colors, even blended together, for the bill.  Erasing and reworking made it worse, so I had to give up.  A good learning experience overall though, and I'll certainly try pastels again.

Also, I got fingerprint smudges everywhere!  Should have put a protective sheet down.  I do like the way the eye turned out -- quite expressive.

Copy Cat

One thing I like to do from time to time is copy other people's art, partly just for practice and partly to see if I can learn anything from their style or technique.  I found a book called Natural Histories: Extraordinary Birds which is a selection of works from the American Museum of Natural History Library (Paul Sweet, Sterling Publishing, 2013).  It's a boxed set with a book and a set of loose prints.

I took out the first print, from the mid-1500s, attributed to Pierre Gourdelle, from a French book.  The bird is a White Stork:

This is a woodcut, which I'm not able to do, so I tried copying it with pen and ink and watercolor:

I could have defined the body feathers better (and may go back and do so), but otherwise this was a pleasing experience.

I'm nearly finished with Hawthorne on Painting (it's quite short) and am finding it repetitious.  He basically has one thing to say:  paint spots of color against each other using the proper tonal values and everything will come out right.  And he says it over and over and over and over.  Ah, well.  So it goes.

Art Today

Today I finished a half-done pen-and-ink and watercolor sketch of a Barred Owl:

Next, I did a watercolor painting of a Hooded Merganser preening (from my own photo, taken at the Union Bay Natural Area):

I also started reading Hawthorne on Painting, a collection of notes to students by artist Charles Hawthorne, collected between 1900-1935 or thereabouts.  He has a rather different approach than I learned, focused on color first -- here is a quote:

"You are not here to make pictures--do not worry about the drawing, make the thing as ugly as you like, but put down the colors, matching one against another.  I don't say much about drawing because I think drawing the form and painting are better separated.  Realize that you haven't yet the painting point of view--after you have got the spots of color true and in their proper relations you have something to draw with and you can then consider it.  Remember no amount of good drawing will pull you out if your colors are not true.  Get them true and you will be surprised how little else you will need."

Charles Hawthorne

The Big Read Comes to an End -- Hurrah!

In December I read another 14 books, for a grand, record-smashing 2014 total of 185 books.  Whew!  Boy howdy, I don't want to do that again.  Next year I want to focus on art, so this blog will go unused and/or mutate into something else.  We shall see.

102 of the books were nonfiction and 83 were fiction, for a total of nearly 50,000 pages.  They are listed in previous posts, so here I will just note the ones added in December.

Nonfiction
On the Map (Simon Garfield)
One Man's River (Keith Brockie)
Open Horizons (Sigurd Olson)
Out of the Flames (Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone)
A Passion for Books (H. Rabinowitz/R. Kaplan, editors)
The Year of Reading Dangerously (Andy Miller)
The Path: A One-Mile Walk Through the Universe (Chet Raymo)
Picture This: How Pictures Work (Molly Bang)
Phantoms on the Bookshelves (Jacques Bonnet)

Fiction
The Cruelest Month (Louise Penny)
A Rule Against Murder (Louise Penny)
Nuts to You (Lynne Perkins)
The Brutal Telling (Louise Penny)
The Only Thing Worse Than Witches (Lauren Magaziner)

Happy New Year's Eve!

The Big Read: November 2014 Books Read

I'm happily on my way to obliterating my previous record for books read in one year (147 in 2011), having just finished book number 171 this year.  It's great to have so many good books out there and lots of time to read them.

Here is the list of books read in November.

Nonfiction

Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus Christ (Thomas Cahill)
Mysteries of the Middle Ages (Thomas Cahill)

Two more in Cahill's Hinges of History series that looks at crucial turning points in cultural history.

The Mysterious Lands (Ann Zwinger)
The Nearsighted Naturalist (Ann Zwinger)

The first is about four desert regions in the U.S. and the second is a collection of essays by this midwest-based naturalist.

Natural History in the Highlands and Islands (F. Fraser Darling)
Scottish natural history in great detail written in the 1940s; of interest only to odd people like me.

The Natural History of the Long Expedition to the Rocky Mountains 1819-1820 (Howard Evans)
It wasn't "Long" because it was long, but because it was led by Major Stephen Long, though you hear very little about him in this interesting book.  Mostly it's about the other members, with lovely illustrations by expedition member Titian Peale.

Nature Walks (Cathy Johnson)
So-so book of essays about nature and art.

The Natural History of Selborne (Gilbert White)
A classic from the late 1700s in which White carefully examines the plants, birds, insects, mammals, and geology in his southwestern English parish in a series of letters.

Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick (Jenny Uglow)
Fascinating biography of the English artist who singlehandedly rescued wood engraving from oblivion with innovative techniques that beautifully illustrated many books on nature and especially birds.  Yes, this is the Bewick for whom Bewick's Wren was named.  Interesting fellow!

Noise: A Human History of Sound and Listening (David Hendy)
Even-handed and intriguing account of sound through the ages.

Of Time and Place (Sigurd Olson)
Series of essays by naturalist and adventurer who specialized in canoeing the lakes and rivers of northern Minnesota/lower Canada.

Fiction

Persuasion (Jane Austen)
I could have sworn that I'd read everything by Austen, yet I did not remember this when I "re" read it, so maybe not!  I liked the story of Anne Elliot and her long-delayed romance, plus it had the virtue of being short.

Comet in Moominland (Tove Jansson)
A re-read of an old favorite children's book.

Still Life (Louise Penny)
A Fatal Grace  "
First two in the mystery series featuring homicide detective Armand Gamache, set in a small town in Quebec.  Good stuff.

The Keeper of Lost Causes (Jussi Adler-Olson)
Mystery by a Danish author featuring Copenhagen homicide detective Carl Morck, who has to come to terms with a devastating shootout while trying to solve the cold case of a missing politician.  Excellent!*
*WARNING: I naturally bought the 2nd in the series, The Absent One, and am very sorry I did, as it is full of sadistic, vicious characters and animal cruelty.  Extremely disappointing after the first book, and after struggling to get even halfway through (with skimming), I gave up, on both the book and the author.

One more month to go on the Big Read -- and then I may take a reading sabbatical.  For at least a few days, anyway.

The Big Read: October 2014

It's official:  I reached my Big Read goal of breaking my all-time "books read in one year" record, formerly held by 2011 with 147* books.  Whoo-hoo!  In fact, I'm currently at 155, so not only have I broken the record, by the end of the year it will be obliterated.

*it should probably be 146, because I counted a Sherman's Lagoon comic strip collection, but since I also read one of those this year, I'll go ahead and keep both books on the lists.

Next year I plan to relax, slow down, aim for fewer than 100 books, and tackle some big, fat, dense stuff.  And now, here is the October list of books read.

Nonfiction

Listening Point (Sigurd Olson)
The Lonely Land (Sigurd Olson)
Olson was a nature writer who spent decades exploring the woods, lakes, and rivers of Canada and has an engaging, often lyrical style.

Lost Heritage: Wilderness America Through the Eyes of Seven Pre-Audubon Naturalists (Henry Savage Jr.).  
Just what it says.  Well-written, interesting account.

The Greatest Stories Never Told (Rick Beyer).  
A bathroom book of short descriptions of historical oddities, most of which weren't that odd if you've read as much as I have.

Lucy's Bones, Sacred Stones, and Einstein's Brain (Harvey Rachlin).  
Stories of a wide variety of historical objects and where they are now; rather dull overall.

The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein (Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler). Fascinating and highly recommended biography (Lynne, you might like this one!).  I always knew Byron was a cad, but was not so aware that Percy Bysshe Shelley was nearly as unpleasant -- he abandoned his wife and children to run off with Mary (when she was 16), subsequently cheating on her with her own step-sister.  Mary was an amazing woman (she wrote Frankenstein at 19) and this book is a very well written look at her chaotic life.

Mountain Reflections (Keith Brockie) 
A naturalist and illustrator from Scotland; beautiful watercolors and lovely prose.

The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels (Thomas Cahill).  
Volume 2 in Cahill's multi-part "Hinges of History" series in which he examines crucial turning points in cultural history.

Fiction

The Old Fox Deceiv'd (Martha Grimes).
The Anodyne Necklace   "
The Dirty Duck               "
Jerusalem Inn                  "
Help the Poor Struggler  "
Having failed mightily to find good new mystery authors, I re-read a bunch of early Martha Grimes (her Richard Jury series of British detective novels).  I enjoyed them, though by the last one I read, I was growing tired of the same old tropes she keeps trotting out, and in looking ahead, it doesn't seem as if that changes any.  So I'm done with her for now.

Lockwood & Co.: The Screaming Staircase (Jonathan Stroud).
A middle-grade fantasy set in London where ghosts have returned to not only haunt, but harm the living, and since children can see them better than adults, they are trained and used to hunt the ghosts down and destroy them.  Dark stuff, yet the tone is kept fairly light and even amusing overall.

Sherman's Lagoon: Lunch Wore a Speedo (Jim Toomey).
Yes, it's a comic strip collection.  Hey, it's a book!  There were words!

The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates: The Terror of the Southlands (Caroline Carlson).
Middle-grade fantasy, a sequel to Magic Marks the Spot, and while entertaining enough, not nearly as good as the first one.

The Rise and Fall of Mount Majestic (Jennifer Trafton).
Another middle-grade fantasy and again, mildly entertaining but a bit of a disappointment, as there were far too many characters and too much weirdness -- a fantasy book really only needs one odd thing to work well, not three dozen.

All in all, the more I read fiction of late, the more I like nonfiction.