birdspot

Traversing the country, drawing lines of a sort and making scrawls on a geography vast enough to spur both awe and despair, I have been keeping lists. This is a Big Year. It is not a year in which I am trying to break records for numbers of bird species seen, as that would be ridiculous. I have neither the funds nor the willingness to visit a place – as every place is a Place – merely to tick something from it, and then run to the next place, to tick something from that.

Sightings are sightings however, and records are useful. I like to make my records tangible, give my memories a form. I thought I would share some of my lists from my trip in a few posts this week. It isn’t physical here though, is it? Paper is a beautiful thing, in its physicality, for its tactile qualities. All the little scraps I have collected will likely long outlast me, even if they flutter off to sink into a landfill somewhere. This has become something different; everything has become something different this year.

Images, top to bottom (click for larger image):

Studies of Plain Chachalacas, digital sketch (drawn in Photoshop using a Wacom tablet)
List 01 (Summary): Digital image and ink on paper
List 02 (TX): Digital image and ink on paper (detail below)

I have been moving around quite a bit, and I have stories to tell, but I need a little time to tell them. So for now, I give you a drawing of Brian Patteson’s cat Tiger. Brian runs the pelagic trips I took in NC (with the most excellent Kate Sutherland), and in my off moments (meaning almost none), I sketched his two cats. I am allergic to cats. I liked his anyway.

A link to the Seabirding Pelagic Trips site: http://www.patteson.com/

This little gem of a sketch is by Rosa Bonheur, an art history book stalwart if ever there was one. My ancient copies of Gardner’s Art through the Ages, or Janson’s History of Art seemed to have exactly two women artists before 1970: Artemisia Gentileschi and Rosa Bonheur. I’m sure there were perhaps one or two more, but you get the idea. When I saw this in the Mass Audubon’s Visual Arts Center collection, my jaw dropped, and into my exhibit it went (Ink, Internet, & Identification – Catherine Hamilton as Curator and Artist – opens Jan 16, 2011). Though not a bird, it embodies everything I love about sketching, and drawing. Just look at the movement in the head on the elk (?) on the right. Astonishing.

Halloween! Scratchboard, details of 8 x 11″ sheet