Cape May Field Sketches - Part Seven

Sumi brush pen sketch of Black-bellied Plover at Nummy Island, by Ken Januski.

We visit Cape May, NJ at least once a year most years and during that visit I almost always do some field sketches. For many years I've also posted some of them here. But it seems like I've not done so in a number of years and 2019 is rapidly disappearing.

So, hoping that my post doesn't get eaten by Blogger as happened the other day with my last post, I'm trying for a quick one that will mainly just have captions  on  the various drawings. These are not photographic studies. They are generally done very quickly, before the bird changes position or flies off. Sometimes they are hard to  do. A photo is so much quicker and easier. But photos always lack in liveliness. For me there's nothing more exciting than field sketches, mine or those of others. And if I ever do use photos it's always because I feel like I've really gotten acquainted  with the bird through  sketching. That allows me to take some liberties with any photos I might use.

Sumi brush pen sketch of Black-bellied Plover at Nummy Island, by Ken Januski.

Sumi brush pen sketch of Boat-tailed Grackle staring up at Double-crested Cormorant at The Wetlands  Institute, by Ken Januski.

Sumi brush pen sketch of five American Avocet at South Cape May  Meadows, by Ken Januski.

Sumi brush pen sketch of juvenile Hudsonian Godwit at Nummy Island, by Ken Januski.

Sumi brush pen sketch of juvenile Hudsonian Godwit at Nummy Island, by Ken Januski.i.

Sumi brush pen sketches of various shorebirds and Least Tern, the latter at Two Mile Landing, by Ken Januski.

Sumi brush pen sketch of male Bobolink at Garrett Family Preserve, by Ken Januski.

Sumi brush pen sketch of Least Terns at South Cape May Meadows, by Ken Januski.

Sumi brush pen sketch of Horseshoe Crab, Red Knot and Laughing Gull at Reed's Beach, by Ken Januski.

Sumi brush pen sketch of sitting Pectoral Sandpiper at South Cape May Meadows, by Ken Januski.

Sumi brush pen sketch of three of 140 Black Skimmers at South Cape May Meadows, by Ken Januski.

Sumi brush pen sketch of three Whimbrel at Two  Mile Landing, by Ken Januski.

Sumi brush pen sketch of two American Avocet at South Cape May Meadows, by Ken Januski.

Sumi brush pen sketch of Wild Turkey at Belleplain State Forest, by Ken Januski.

And since I seem to have made it through this entire post without technical hiccups I'll celebrate by wishing all readers a Happy New Year. I should add that I hope Blogger will survive. I hesitated devoting more of my energy to Facebook than it for years until I realized most of the people whose work I was interested in were on Facebook and most of my own Blogger readers seemed to be bots and other undesirables. But Blogger offers much that Facebook and other social media does not. Hopefully it and its audience will come back to life.

Last Moku Hanga of 2019

I'm sorry to say that Blogger just ate the 60-90 minutes worth of work I'd put into this post. I'm not going to try to reconstruct it. Perhaps Blogger is a dead technology. Or more likely it is just something  that Google has ignored Blogger for  years. It's always possible that the cause has nothing to do with Google but I think that's very unlikely. Certainly something like this should not happen. There should have been a draft version saved.  In any case this is my newest moku hanga print. It's about 6x8 inches excluding the 1 inch border. It is printed in a small edition of 10 on Shin Torinoko paper. Soon I'll print a larger edition on Nishinouchi paper.

This print was based on this sumi brush pen and watercolor sketch of three years ago. I was never really happy with it but continued to think it had potential. I'd say that over 50% of  my most successful prints  have come from studies like this. Sometimes I use them immediately after making them and sometimes they sit around for years before I'm convinced I can use them successfully in a more developed  work. But almost always they have more appeal than working from photos  and they are more successful.

I can't recall the exact sequence but I think I copied the sumi brush pen sketch onto paper, reworked it, glued on some bits and pieces until I had a composition that I thought would work for a new print.  In any case this is pretty much the last sketch I did before starting the  print.

I then copied that sketch at a size that matched a block of Shina plywood I was carving and carved the keyblock, seen above. It always seems attractive to me at this point before it's been inked for the first time. Eventually I printed the numerous kyogo from it. They were then used as color guides for the remaining nine blocks that I used to come up with the finished print. One of them is shown below.

As I said at the start this post was originally much, much longer. But all of that was eaten by Blogger and the draft version had all of 2 letters left in it. So for better or worse I'm leaving it like this. It's not as loquacious but I hope will interest some readers as is. I should add that I'm quite happy with this print and with the growing comfort I'm finding in the process of moku hanga. Technically I continue  to  have great room for improvement. And I'd like to get better technically. But that is never my primary goal, in printmaking or any other medium.