Drawing the Great Blue Heron

I’ve been commissioned to paint a Great Blue Heron for someone, and yesterday I took my sketchbook to our excellent local wildlife rehabilitation center, Wildcare, and was allowed into an enclosure where a cattle egret and a one-winged Great Blue are regaining strength. I don’t think it will be released (you’ll note how through the magic of art I replaced the missing wing) but it was very handsome and healthy in every other respect.

 

The enclosure was large and had a bubbling water feature and a tray of fish and skinned rats. There were small trees, grasses and woody shrubs for the heron and egret to perch on, prowl and hide in. Getting a clear look wasn’t easy with the shy bird, and it became something of a comedy routine. While I sat quietly in the grass (ignoring the ticks and chiggers working their way into my clothes) the Great Blue did a Groucho Marx impression. Leaning forward it stalked back and forth, with its wide black “eyebrow”and a long cigar in the mouth (okay, it was a beak, not a cigar- tell it to Freud). Finally it went behind an enclosure wall and hid from view. A minute later long toes of one foot appeared, testing the waters of visibility. The tip of the bill came out, then the eyes, which stared at me before pulling back. We played peek-a-boo for awhile as I, who was sitting in full sun (right next to the dead fish and rat party platter), dripped big huge sweat drops and tried to hold perfectly still.

 

Finally, the heron stepped into view, facing me head on (does this narrow view of it decrease it’s own visibility to a predator?), and gingerly waited to see what I’d do. Rather than looking directly at it, I got busy sketching, looking up occasionally and then only with sidelong glances. I pretended to be totally uninterested in the heron, which seemed to increase its curiosity about ME. I ended up with a nice little sketch of a heron waffling between curiosity and apprehension, with curiosity winning in the end. Not sure what I’ll do with it, but I’m putting here as a reminder of my morning with Groucho.

How to Paint Big (Try This At Home)

Since painting the Elasmosaur at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History, my first 16 foot painting ever, I’ve been seriously itching to try something at home on a much bigger scale than I’ve been doing all my life. Not that there’s anything wrong with detailed little paintings but my eyes are going and I’m trying to get over the small things in life. Maybe it’s my mid-life crises kicking in.

I made for myself a big wall easel, something anyone can rig up in an hour or so. I took down my Grandmother’s old mirror and a couple of ugly paintings (my own), and put up two vertical shelving strips, the metal ones you can get at the hardware store with narrow slots. For decorating purposes I went with tasteful black. The shelf brackets, which are easily moved up and down the strips (with a couple of taps from a hammer) hold, from top to bottom:
1) a wood dowel with a cheap clear vinyl shower curtain hanging down behind the painting to protect the wall from splashes;
2) a 1×3 wood shelf with a couple of carriage bolts, nuts and washers above and thumbscrews below to push a wood bar down on top of the canvas or panel (I later added a thin strip at the front to keep the canvas more secure);
3) a 1×8 bottom shelf, with drilled holes and wood dowel plugs, removable, to hold the bottom of the canvas in place. I have drilled holes to accommodate wide canvas, narrow canvas and panels held flat against the wall (good for projecting images), and a set of holes closer to the edge of the shelf so I can tilt the canvas out at the bottom.

This whole set-up was cheap and easy to build, is fully adjustable, and if you have to remove it there will be only a few holes in the wall to fill in, a few paint touchups and you’re done. And on my wall, at least, I can go 7′x10′ in canvas size. Fun! a couple of drop cloths and I’m in biz.

My first painting is a Crowned crane preening with its head bafflingly arranged (for maximum amusement of the viewer), so all you see is the golden pouf on top. . .I projected the image and scrubbed in the values with a stiff bristle brush using a thin acrylic mix of Ultramarine and Burnt Umber, on canvas prepped with Daniel Smith Titanium Buff Gesso, which I buy by the gallon can. I then picked out highlights with Titanium White acrylic (Golden Brand). I’m suddenly smitten with painting on canvas, after years of working on panels!

Then I overglazed with washes of Ultramarine, Burnt Sienna, Raw Sienna, and Cadmium Yellow, which I regret somewhat (the Cad Yellow, that is), so I’ll be going over that with some Raw Sienna to tone it down a hair. Here’s a photo of my set-up, taken from the stairs leading up to my “real” studio, the one with the little easel and the drawing table. How nice to work downstairs for a change!

I’ll post more on this painting as I go.

Goatsucker is Not An Epithet

Is this bird in eclipse plumage?

There are few better ways to start your day than rising before dawn to watch a lunar eclipse. With a comfortable chair, hot coffee and spotting scope, I had a lot of time to contemplate the Universe, Time, Space, and Mortality.

And an unexpected goatsucker.
With the moon in totality, it was fascinating to watch stars come out all around it. How often do you see a full moon sliding over and occluding little stars? The bright disk became a dusky ball, a stone in the sky. As it moved down toward the horizon, the sky began to lighten and the first birds to sing. Field sparrows, trilling away in the tallgrass. That’s when I noticed a larger bird fluttering upwards by the gate, rising, flipping over and coming back down. I turned the scope to look at the top of the gatepost and there was a night bird of some sort. It was perched too horizontally for an owl, and was hawking prey. Every minute or so would go up to catch something, flaring rounded wings as it flipped around. As the day began to lighten I started to see more than its silhouette:  two pale spots emerged, one on either side of the breast, and what looked like a thin pale crescent appeared across the throat. A  wide pale bar was distinctly on the shoulder, and what looked like  a lighter area on the back of the neck. The bill was tiny and curved, the eye big and black. I haven’t gotten to watch many nightjars (another name for goatsucker) actively hunting, and this one was alert, searching with rapid movements of its head, looking this way and that.

Goatsucker is the common generic name for the family Caprimulgidae (Caprimulgus means “goatsucker” in Latin- it was once believed that these poor birds milked goats on the fly); Whippoorwills are goatsuckers, as are Poorwills. We have Chuck-will’s Widows here commonly, and I assume that’s what it was. Our Chuck-will’s nest around us every year and I was once lucky enough to witness a spring courtship display right down on the driveway. My eclipse goatsucker was merely hunting, probably on its way to winter grounds down south. I do hope it found snacks for the road, and I wish it a safe journey and safe return.