Tim Wootton: Trouble at t’Mill.
WHY PAINT BIRDS?
The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense his life … The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds – how many human aspirations are realized in their free, holiday-lives – and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!
John Burroughs
I hope you love birds too. It is economical. It saves going to heaven.
Emily Dickinson
Of all our fellow inhabitants of planet Earth, birds are among the most admired, revered and envied. Birds have appeared in art for many thousands of years and our fascination with them continues. But what is it that draws us to paint the bird as a subject?
There are probably as many individual reasons for wanting to paint birds as there are individuals wishing to do so. They can be elegant and beautiful; they dazzle us with their aerial dexterity and fascinate us with their complex behaviour; and there is much else that appeals to us. My personal obsession with all things bird-related started when I was a very young lad, stumbling upon a grey, slightly pendulous ball – a moss and lichen construction, bound by gossamer and secreted in the spiny tangle of a bramble bush. Doing what boys did back in the dark ages, I squirmed my way through to see what was inside this tiny pouch. It was a long-tailed tit’s nest and inside there happened to be baby long-tailed tits – seemingly dozens of them. I took one out of the nest and just looked at it, totally amazed at something so absolutely tiny and so perfectly finished, albeit tail-less. It had the cutest belligerence and from that moment I’ve been bird-mad.
If I’m ever asked what I was first, an artist or a birdwatcher, I’m really not sure. It has always seemed to be such a natural and obvious process for me to see something whilst out of doors and then to want to make a representation of that thing.
Tim Wootton: long-tailed tit.
Jonathan Pointer: white dove. Pigeons have been kept since medieval times for their eggs and their meat; much selective breeding has been undertaken to produce the fancy domestic types that are around today.
I appreciate that many others will come to drawing and painting birds from a different perspective. You could already be an experienced artist looking to expand your portfolio; perhaps you’re a birdwatcher wishing to increase your enjoyment of your hobby; or maybe you’ve just had one of those moments of revelation, something akin to my childhood experience with a nestful of baby long-tailed tits.
I remember working as a volunteer warden for the RSPB at Loch Garten in the highlands of Scotland. The job of the volunteers was to mount a twenty-four-hour vigil on the osprey’s nest, in case of attack from egg-thieves. But another aspect of the job was to help visitors to the nature reserve locate the ospreys whenever the birds returned from a fishing trip. We had remote cameras overlooking the nest and images were relayed back to the Visitor Centre, which people would watch. But after a few minutes of looking at a TV screen with an osprey just lying there, gasping in the sun or more often hunkered down against the wind and rain, people would get bored and wander around. But whenever a bird came in carrying a fish – well, that was a different story. Some would rush for binoculars and telescopes; others would crowd around the screen and watch the fish being fed to the chicks and almost immediately afterwards there would be a surge towards the RSPB membership recruitment desk. They had caught the birding bug!
John Busby: studies of collared doves. Drawings made from the living bird as it preens and stretches during its afternoon toilet. A passionate and knowledgeable birder, John views the subject from the artist’s perspective, approaching landscapes and writing with the same verve and enthusiasm he brings to his birds. Everything about his drawings is perfectly balanced and beautifully formed.
Barry Van Dusen: Tree Swallows in a Cherry Tree. Familiar birds in the United States, tree swallows are similar to European house martins. House martins live in very close proximity to man, building nests of mud under house eaves, and tree swallows will regularly use nest boxes; they share the same local environments as us.
Alan Dalton: juvenile redwing. A field drawing made in biro with written notes describing various aspects of plumage detail. An exceptionally gifted artist, Alan is in the ‘birder-artist’ camp and is fascinated by bird study as a science.
So whatever your personal motivation to embark upon this path there is no doubt that it will be a real voyage of discovery, not without its tribulations and frustrations but, as with all things meaningful, the pain will blend with the pleasure and with practice and a decent measure of determination, you will succeed. And I don’t think there could be any more worthwhile way of spending time than with nature, and with art.
It is a curious thing, this ‘bird art’: the more you do it, the more it draws you in. It can reveal intoxicating insights, such as the iridescence of a starling’s plumage, or the unexpected aerial brilliance of a house sparrow in pursuit of a small white butterfly, hovering and somersaulting in such a way as to make it seem completely unrelated to that dumpy, chirrupy finch that bounces about around the bread on your garden lawn. (Even that most basic assumption that it’s a sparrow is now repudiated: apparently it’s actually a member of the weaver finch family and not a true ‘sparrow’ at all.) But one thing about trying to draw birds is it makes you look; and the more you look the more you see.
Once captivated by the birds, whichever way it happens, other strange things may start to occur. You’ll find you want to see a bit more, and in greater detail, because when the collared dove stretches its neck back and lifts its tail, what is it actually doing? And what’s really going on when the ducks at the local park stretch one wing out (they seem to do it on one leg)? In fact, you start to watch birds and, in all probability, just about everything else around you too. Soon you may find yourself borrowing a pair of binoculars, which leads to buying a pair (as they allow you to see so much more of the birds’ private lives), and before long your friends and family start calling you a ‘twitcher’. You may not be a twitcher, but you will have become a birdwatcher.
You may start out as someone wishing to make some pretty pictures with birds on them, but the chances are you’ll soon become so engrossed with the daily comings and goings of the creatures around you that some days you won’t even draw them – but just enjoy them. When you are at that stage, when you simply enjoy birds for all that they are, then you can start to connect with the essence of the creatures.
As you’re watching a blackbird hunting a damp lawn for worms, you’ll soon start to anticipate his next move, a staccato stride-hop with head on one side, quick dart forward, slight shuddering struggle (notice the weight transferred through the body to a pulling position) and out comes the worm – down in one – look up, glance around (maybe a quick side-to-side wipe of his bill) and on to the next one. By watching and observing comes the ability to predict the next piece of action and this will hold you in good stead when it comes to making an image of the scene you are witnessing – because you’ll be ready for it.
Although birds are motifs in many genres of art, there is something quite distinctive about the subject of bird art. It encompasses a huge range of interests: the science of ornithology, the hobby of birdwatching, caged-bird keeping, falconry and hunting, and can be found in the finest galleries and collections as well as on calendars, greetings cards and T-shirts.
John Busby: two starlings bathing. A Conté pencil drawing; a real sense of the artist deriving as much pleasure from the event as are the birds.
Tim Wootton: waxwing in the garden. An acrylic painting made in the studio one winter evening, immediately after watching this bird settling down to roost; the sun had just disappeared from view and was backlighting the scene with a golden winter light.
Tim Wootton: puffins.
Paschalis Dougalis: Steinkauz (little owl).
In fact it could be said that ‘bird art’ straddles two disciplines, and two that aren’t usually seen as comfortable bedfellows: science and art. There is no doubt that bird art has been disparaged throughout the years by art critics who don’t recognize it as a form of self-expression but can only see the pedantic approach to bird representation; whilst on the other hand the subject suffers from attacks by less forgiving sceptics who will readily identify errors in plumage detail or attitude of any piece of bird-related art that doesn’t conform to their exacting scientific measure. Perhaps it’s exactly this apparent dichotomy that makes birds and bird art so engaging. And why some artists are adamant that they will not be pigeon-holed into either art or illustration – if indeed there is a difference.
Certain birds seem to make a deep connection with us; something about the way they are and the way they behave touches us poignantly and, rightly or wrongly, it is difficult not to think that they are just a little bit like us. There are some real avian characters – true ambassadors of their kind. If a public relations company were to try and design a birdy-figurehead with which humanity would connect, it would find it near impossible to come up with anything quite so engaging as a puffin. Described as sea-parrots or clowns, depending on how generous you’re being, they are delightful to look at and certainly strike a chord with us, albeit anthropomorphically. Other personalities of the bird world must include parrots and budgerigars, peacocks perhaps, penguins certainly, owls and falcons, ostriches and wrens – I imagine there isn’t a bird alive that someone doesn’t adore. Magpies get a bad press but I find them incredibly beautiful and fascinating to watch. Every garden will have its regular flying visitors, and every owner of each garden will view the birds as ‘their’ birds, feed them and watch their seasonal movements; and they would certainly notice if the robin didn’t appear for a day or two!
Mike Woodcock: house sparrow. A characterful acrylic portrait delighting in this familiar species.
Birds become such a part of our everyday lives in a way that wild mammals, for the most part, never could. Mammals, by and large, have decided not to get too close to humans – they’ve learned from past history that it’s generally not good for their health. It’s this regular and solicited contact with birds that sets them apart from the rest of the animal kingdom and it must also be one of the main reasons why we would wish to capture their image in whatever way our artistic endeavours would allow us.
But besides birds being familiar and constant companions, they also symbolize the free and wild. If the robin and sparrow represent all that we cherish in our domestic environment, then birds such as eagles, albatrosses and terns must inhabit the other end of our psyche. These are special creatures indeed and it’s very difficult not to become infatuated with them once we have had even the slightest contact with them. These are far removed from the garden blue tits, whose daily comings and goings we witness as part of our own daily routine, watching them collect nest material to stuff into the nesting box we’ve made or bought and nailed to our shed wall; watching ma and pa blue tit out collecting little green caterpillars for hungry youngsters; and finally to watch them emerge from the hole and disappear into the wilderness of the garden shrubbery.
Nick Derry: long-tailed tits at the garden feeder. Watercolour and white gouache on tinted paper.
Andrew Ellis: osprey. Acrylics.
Paschalis Dougalis: portrait of a sparrowhawk. This species became virtually extinct in Britain, suffering DDT poisoning as a result of concentration of the chemical in the food chain.
Robert Bateman: cock pheasant crowing.
Learning just a tiny amount about the arctic tern is surely enough to turn anyone on to this superb little bird, which habitually migrates the furthest – some of them over 22,000 miles every year, following the summer sun. Some breed in the Arctic and migrate during the end of summer to enjoy the fish stocks and the long daylight of the Austral summer while the northern hemisphere endures the cold winter months. About the size of a starling, Arctic terns can live up to thirty years and do a 50,000-mile round trip each year.
Eagles have symbolized power and nobility for thousands of years and they are still held in similar regard today. Unfortunately, like all birds of prey, they find themselves in conflict with mankind and his designs on how the world should operate. Poisoning, trapping and shooting have been the bird of prey’s prospect for too long now, and although we are in an age of so-called enlightenment, this dark outlook continues, even in Britain.
And then there are species about which we know very little, such as albatrosses and their kin; what do they do when not on their breeding sites dotted throughout the Southern Oceans? No doubt research and satellite tracking will reveal more to science, but I suspect it will be quite a while before we ever fully get to know them. Add to these birds some so secretive they are never seen in daylight – those that live in caves in dense forests, those inhabiting frozen wastelands, birds on every continent and in almost every place imaginable (including the Moon, if we believe some nineteenth-century works on natural history!).
Here I’ve mentioned just a few species and what they mean to us, but there are almost 9,000 bird species on Earth. A world of birds truly is a rich and wondrous heritage, and it is little wonder that artists turn to them as a Muse, and that birds themselves can turn otherwise normal folk into artists!
Bruce Pearson: studies of albatrosses.
Tim Wootton: After the Rain. An oil painting of arctic terns on a sea-stack in the Orkney Islands. For almost a decade now arctic terns have been all but failing in their attempts to breed in northern Europe. Where I live in Orkney there had been hardly any arctic tern chicks fledged for several years and in 2008 every colony in the Isles had been deserted by the adult birds long before any chicks were raised. All except one, that is. A relatively tiny colony of birds stayed together and between the eighty adults, they managed to raise seventeen youngsters. I spent many summer evenings sitting on the cliff top adjacent to the colony making drawings and paintings of the birds. There was one particular evening of warm sun interspersed with squally showers blowing across from the north west, and afterwards the low liquid sunlight seemed all the warmer and illuminated the scene perfectly. This is the painting that resulted from that moment, titled After the Rain because of the meteorological reference and the philosophical one; perhaps this tiny bastion of chick-rearing birds would herald an upturn in the fortunes of the arctic tern in the islands?
