Moku hanga with regular watercolors trial#

I didn't want portraits, where cute animals were centered on the canvas or print as though posing in a photographers studio. Since the day I started wildlife art, specifically bird art, over 10 years ago I knew some things I didn't want. Brush Pen and Watercolor painting by Ken Januski. Juvenile and adult Sora and Virginia Rail. In any case I'm happy with this 12x16 inch painting. And I think my prints show that this is also true with them. But other than as a learning tool I have no interest in painting in such a manner. Inevitably this will not have the detail or the realism of more fastidious detailed work. The sumi brush pen and watercolor painting below is the result of my attempt to capture the scene, be spontaneous but still be at least somewhat true to what the species actually looked like. I wanted to capture the actual scene of Sora and Virginia Rail all together, constantly moving out of view and back into the reeds. So I try to do what I can to learn them but to let the actual prints and paintings look spontaneous, or at least not constipated.įurther down on this page are some field sketches I did at Cape May a few weeks ago, mainly of Sora, Virginia Rail and Wilson's Snipe. On the other hand, especially with wildlife art and particular species, I can't very well just ignore the specifics. And I rebel against too much detail and too much adherence to what something looks like. Early state moku hanga proof by Ken Januski.Īll of my work desires spontaneity in some form or another. It took a long time to come to this decision but I finally did. But in the end I decided that I needed all of the lines. The proof below with minimal line was my attempt to keep the color fields and just use the most essential line. The proof without lines has a lot of areas I like but they just don't fit with my idea of the print. There is an aesthetic that says that this is just fine but it's not MY aesthetic. My long history with abstract art has taught me that you really have to be careful about precious areas of a painting, areas that can seduce the eye but that don't add much to the entire painting or print. The color field proof was done much earlier in the process and the linear one as I made the final edition. Another proof shows only color fields with no line at all.

Moku hanga with regular watercolors trial#

So below you see a trial proof of the same print using lines just on the cuckoo. This makes sense for various reasons, but I still miss line. Contemporary moku hanga has largely abandoned line for color fields. So.I'm just going to show some recent work here, though without a lot of theorizing.Īt top is the finished moku hanga print of 'Yellow-billed Cuckoo with Worm.' Traditional moku hanga includes very finely painted, carved and printed lines. It seems crazy to me that this has not happened but there's no doubt that is has not. But I used to think that eventually print, especially printed newspapers and magazines would make a comeback. So perhaps blogs will return to popularity. There is something there but it certainly isn't the more developed, thoughtful discursive material that is available in something like a blog. But Facebook reminds me of what I used to call 'snippet journalism', journalism whether in print or online or television that was too breezy and short to be of much value. I didn't like any of this but I finally decided to try it. I finally relented and joined Facebook a few years ago, mainly to have access to some artists whose work was hidden without a Facebook logon and perhaps a friend request. Of course a lot of this came about as social media became more popular. So I have no reason to write posts for hackers and others who just aren't interested in anything I want them to be interested in. This didn't use to be the case but it is now. The great majority are from countries known for their hacking, especially for the purpose of identity theft, or from sites that aren't legit. It's based on reading the stats of who visits, who links, etc.

So a year ago or more I decided to limit my writing here.Ī newer motivation is both a seeming lack of interest from readers and moreso a belief that most viewers are interested for the wrong reasons: hacking or some other motive not related to my art. Though I obviously have an interest in thinking about things, especially artistic things, I often feel that is to the detriment of actually making art. One reason is an old one: I tend to write more than make art on this blog. It has been a very long time since I've posted anything here.