Conversations in Avian Art and Ornithology

  In order to succeed as a species, we all need clean air, clean water, a good food supply and a safe place to raise our family.  These four necessities may be applied throughout the animal kingdom, and birds are no exception.  We have landscaped our yard to help facilitate these needs for birds and we gain much pleasure from watching the birds in our yard.  Spring is here and birds are migrating to their nesting grounds or defending their little piece of real estate in our neighborhood for raising this year's brood.  I am always amazed at the variety of birds [...]

I enjoy teaching birding/ ornithology classes and getting people enthused about birds.  Understanding the science or how to navigate field guides can be difficult for someone who is starting to watch birds.  Bird ID books are daunting for newcomers to use.  I believe many people don’t move beyond a cursory glance at birds because it is difficult to match the bird seen with one in a field guide.  Some basic knowledge and guidance is needed to make birding worth the effort.   For example, the following information is the basic first steps to learning birds.  If you are just starting out or you [...]

Hummer GV-E, Green Violet-ear Hummingbird   I have spent a great deal of time working closely with birds as a biologist.  Most of the time I was not in a position to photograph the birds.  Conducting educational programs with an eagle, hawk, owl, vulture, raven or falcon on my gloved arm make it hard for me to take a snap shot of the bird.  Equally difficult is getting that perfect shot of a bird in the field doing an interesting behavior when I am busy counting the number of birds and identifying their species during a survey of a certain area in a [...]

I am up before the light to collect the group I am guiding.  When there is enough light to see color, the crazy onslaught of tracking down a specific song in the cacophony of the dawn chorus or following the zip of movement from my peripheral view begins.  I see the bird and raise my binoculars.  First things first, I have a second or two to identify the exotic bird, then I have to try to get as many of my group to find it in the bush or tree ahead of us.  Another flit whizzes by and I am off [...]

A cardinal sin of a field biologist or animal trainer is to anthropomorphize their interpretations of their subject as having human emotions or personalities.  I spent my career as a biology and bird trainer trying to evaluate bird behaviors objectively, based on motivations driven by survival, like the fight or flight response, and leaving any emotions out of the equation.  It is only now that science is finding the animal kingdom, especially birds, do possess traits, behaviors and intelligence we thought previously as only human.   More than a few times I have heard people describe my ability to portray birds in a [...]

I started this hummingbird painting as a demonstration at a Woman Artists of the West national art show.  I showed how to add abstracted elements to the background of a painting.  In the first photo I have added various transparent yellow and blue pigments to the background.  If I want the white of the gessoed canvas to show through, then I start with transparent paint.  I will glaze a layer of paint, then drop mineral spirits on to the paint.  This produces a run-back or blooming effect with concentrated edges.  I may also drop or splatter diluted paint using a wet [...]

I have had over 75 different bird species in and around my yard.  Most of those are frequent visitors or permanent residents.  Different types of birds come for various reasons.  Insectivorous birds like swallows, flycatchers, vireos, warblers and wren hunt for insects or use our water features to bathe or drink.  Predatory birds feed on smaller birds at the feeders or our goldfish in the pond.  Sparrows, finches, hummingbirds, woodpecker, blackbirds, chickadees, nuthatch and dove come to the feeders.  Omnivorous birds like crows, thrushes and starling will eat anything they find.   I really enjoy watching the birds that nest and/or raise their [...]

My first glazing layer, known as the under painting, is one of my most important layers.  Since I am trying to keep the painting mostly transparent, the lines in my sketch become important.  As I apply the thinned oil paint I need to identify which edges will be hard or soft.  With hard edges I can leave the pencil line visible to help define the edge.  If I plan to cover a line with dark values or opaque paint, then I can let it stay.  If the area will be light in value or I want the edges to be soft [...]

Rust can be a beautiful thing, as long as it is where you want it to be.  In creating Mourning the Past, I want to establish a textural difference between the bird and the rusty train.  I employ many watercolor techniques in my oil paintings.  The transparent pigments ultramarine blue, permanent alizarin crimson and Indian yellow are my main triad pigments.  I want to make my oil painting look more like watercolor, so I am experimenting with a variety of watercolor techniques like wet-in-wet and other texturing techniques.  After laying down a number of thin, mono-colored glazes of my transparent triad, [...]

I received a phone call one day from a woman asking if I had a Bohemian Waxwing painting.  She told me that a friend of hers had visited my studio during the Orcas Island Artist’s Studio Tour, and had picked up my business postcard and sent it to her.  After visiting my website, she decided to call.  I told her that I had not painted a Bohemian Waxwing, but was thinking about painting Cedar Waxwings.  A few years back, I had raised a clutch of baby waxwings.  They now come back to our yard every year to eat our raspberries and [...]