Summer Workshops at Hog Island, Maine!

Well! It's been a long time since I've been able to announce an in-person workshop schedule. With improved and improving coronavirus and vaccine news, venues have started to make plans for amended summer programming. Yep, it's a spot of light at the end of the long, tedious tunnel.

Long-time followers will know that the highlight of my summers, long before I moved to Maine, was teaching at the Hog Island Audubon Camp. Summer camp for grown ups has run here every year since 1936, except for one summer during World War II...

... and last year.

So it's with delight that I announce the opening of registration for this summer's camp programs. There will be lots of changes, of course... participant numbers have been cut in half, masks and distancing will still be required. But the island will still be beautiful and even at arm's length the camaraderie and learning will be great.

I'll be on the instructional staff for Arts & Birding week, June 20-25. This year I am particularly excited that not only will I be working once again with the fabulous Jean Mackay, but we've also been able to add good friends and fabulous colleagues Barry Van Dusen and Sean Murtha to the team. The phrase Dream Team might be overused, but in this case it's totally appropriate.

Also new this year are "day camp" programs. If you're not yet ready to join a residential camp experience, but would like to visit Hog Island, I'll be leading a one day on-island sketching adventure on June 10! We'll start out with some skills practice and then roam the island filling sketchbook pages. 

I've got a few more workshops and demos in the works, so watch this space for announcements of firm dates. Yippee! Let's go draw outside this summer!

The Hundreds for November

Alrighty, then! Whew... I made it to a hundred little sketches for the month of November. This doesn't seem like such a big deal when one does the math: 100 sketches in a month is 3-4 per day. The trick is that if one somehow misses two days, then suddenly there are 10 sketches to do!

The hardest part for me is deciding what to draw. I want these sketches to be fast... responsive... interpretive... not careful pre-linocut drawings or long value studies. To that end I tried to stick to pen; if I used a pencil my inclination to go all crazy with subtle values would lead me down time-consuming paths.

I also want to work from life as much as possible, but it's November (now December). Daylight hours are short (especially up here in the north country) and there's rain and cold (and soon snow) to contend with and I am a wimp. So at the moment this means a lot of drawing indoors... interiors of coffee shops, my house, the laundromat. I did find one nice day to go to the Maine Wildlife Park before they closed for the season, and a couple of nice days for sketching landscapes near home.

To break things up I also worked from movies and a YouTube video described as Cat TV. (Footage of birds coming in and out of a feeder station.) I'd watch for an interesting frame, hit the pause button, and draw as fast as possible. The temptation to slow down and try to get a likeness on movie frames was huge, but I kept reminding myself my goal was to get the idea down quickly and move on.

It was a satisfying adventure, but rut ro! Now it's December. Here we go again!

In the meantime, here's a little flip through the sketchbook... I think I missed turning a couple of pages, but you get the idea. This month I'd like to be more deliberate about overall page composition, so we'll see how that goes. Onward!

The Return of The Hundreds

Five down, 95 more to go for November.

After a summer of almost zero studio time, my work groove has felt... well... not groovy. Both my hands and my thought processes are rusty, and I have been frustrated with my lack of creative grace.

But then I remembered The Hundreds.

Unbelievably, more than a decade has passed since my friend Tim Deibler and I challenged each other to make 100 thumbnail sketches every month for a year. Even though our success with the challenge waxed and waned, I managed to fill two sketchbooks with compositions and ideas... mostly from life, but sometimes from the television and videos.

It seemed a fine idea to take up the Hundreds challenge again, not only for tuning up my skills, but also for helping me get to understand Maine better. Believe it or not, today is the two-year anniversary of my move here from Colorado, and in a lot of ways I still feel very much a stranger.

So I relaunched my Hundreds effort in mid-October and managed to get 50 sketches done by yesterday, so now I'm off and running on the start of a new month. It's been blowing a literal gale here (more power outages, but so far not in my area!), so today's sketches are a mix of life drawings from inside my house and compositions derived from photographs I took this morning outside. I gave myself no more than ten minutes to find each composition and sketch it in ink before moving on to the next one.

Carrying a sketchbook with me is a long habit, but giving myself an assignment and a deadline ensures that I'll take it out and use it regularly. It feels good to flex both mental and physical muscles... so, hey! Why not grab a sketchbook of your own and join me?

The Summer Sessions....

After a solid month of workshop facilitation I finally see light at the end of the one-thing-after-another tunnel. I've got two more short workshops coming up in the next week, but then, whew! I'll have some time back at home and in the studio, catching up with framing and shipping and getting ready to start some new linos.

The past few weeks have been great, though... a lot of time outside in the field! Right on the heels of my exhibition opening at the Museum of American Bird Art I had a grand group of field sketchers at the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland.

Farnsworth Field Sketchers in a friend's garden.

We enjoyed a busy week visiting the beach, the farmers market, and the garden of a friend who lives just a couple of blocks from the museum. We also spent a little time indoors working on drawing and watercolor skills.

Watercolor skill-building at the Farnsworth Art Museum

A few days after that class finished I was off to my annual gig at Hog Island Audubon Camp. "Back in the old days" when I lived in Colorado, coming to camp involved a couple days of travel on either end. Now I live 20 minutes from the camp's mainland dock! I'm still not sure if that's good or bad.

The Arts & Birding team: me, Jean Mackay, Derrick Jackson, Drew Fulton

My first week on the island was for the Arts & Birding session, which I co-facilitate with the fabulous Jean Mackay. If you don't know Jean's work, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

The photography section of our week is led by filmmaker Drew Fulton (he who made the short film about my work in the previous post) and photographer/journalist Derrick Z. Jackson.

Evening salon at Hog Island

One of the highlights of the Arts & Birding week is the evening salon. Every night, just before dinner, anyone who wants to share puts out sketchbooks or laptops with slideshows running, and lively conversation ensues. It's a lovely way to come together and see what everyone has been up to during the day.

My second week on Hog Island was for the high-energy Educators' Week. About 50 educators serving the spectrum of learners from PreK to college, schools to nature centers, came together to share ideas and experiences for outdoor education.

Sketching in the gardens at Hog Island

Of course I always make sure there are opportunities for field sketching at camp! We also make journals, and this year I even managed to squeeze a quick printmaking session onto the already-packed schedule.

And in an amusing twist, a few of the new printmakers decide their prints could translate well as temporary tattoos...

I came home this weekend, did the laundry, paid some bills, answered some email, and now I'm ready to pack a bag again! I'm headed back down to Massachusetts for another quick little workshop at the Museum of American Bird Art, and I'm looking forward to catching up with folks in the Boston area. Then it's back to Maine for a printmaking class at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens... at which point it will already be August! Stay tuned.

Workshops everywhere, and some linos, too!

Whew! July and August... what happened to them?

After two weeks of workshops on at Hog Island Audubon Camp and a short workshop at Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge I immediately... led more workshops!

The first week of August I was joined by eleven fun and inspirational women for a week-long field sketching adventure, hosted by the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland. Naturally it was a week of record heat and humidity, but we were fortunate that our class met mornings and we were able to avoid the worst of the oppressive afternoons. We spent time at Owls Head Light, the Rockland South Beach, and in the garden (complete with chickens!) of one of our group members.

Sketching at Owls Head Light

We spent the hottest morning inside the museum, first drawing from Ai Wei Wei's Circle of Animals gold zodiac heads, and then taking a close look at the preliminary drawings for a number of Andrew Wyeth's paintings. Fun!

Sketching in the Ai Wei Wei exhibit at the Farnsworth Art Museum

The group had such a great time that we've scheduled a "reunion" sketch date next week in Rockport Harbor. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again and filling a page or two of my own this time!

I thought I'd be getting back in the studio the following week, but I was called to sub for some workshop sessions back on Hog Island for Family Camp. This time I was sketching with kids and parents and grandparents...

Sketching in the gardens on Hog Island

Whew! All done now, right? Not quite! I had a pile of framing, packing and shipping to do for upcoming shows at Ann Korologos Gallery in Basalt, Colorado and Oh Be Joyful Gallery in Crested Butte, Colorado. It was the first time I had to manage all that in my new place, so it took extra time to figure out new working systems. But I got it all done, and I know at least some of the work has already made it to its destination.

At long last I got into the studio last week, to work on two small linocuts for Project Postcard, coming up during the Birds in Art exhibition at the Woodson Art Museum in Wisconsin. Carving went well, but the morning I set up to print... disaster!!!!

If you've been following along since my move you might know that Presston, my lovely 30 x 60 Takach press, came out of his 6-month storage adventure with a buckled laminate surface on the bed. After some panicked correspondence with the good folks at Takach I was just about to order a new press bed when my neighbor asked if he could take a look at it. 

He pronounced it fixable, and proceeded to help me pull up the loose portions of the laminate and re-adhere them. Hoorah! I got a couple of editions through the press in between the chaos of workshops and workshop prep and kept my fingers crossed.

Unfortunately, no doubt encouraged by our two weeks of record heat and humidity, the portions of the laminate that had been intact in June decided to pull up, creating a big bubble on half of the bed. There was enough flat space for me to print the two tiny (4 x 6) pieces I was working on, but once again I was dead in the water for anything else. 

This time when my neighbor came by we agreed that the best thing to do would be to remove the laminate across the entire press bed... including the areas we had fixed in June... and stick it all back down again. 

As you can imagine, this was a multi-hour, multi-day project. The old adhesive came up fairly easily, but the new stuff we put on in June? Ooph. We finally finished it yesterday. So far it all seems good... so tonight I tore down some paper and started to prep for a new, largeish lino! What a relief. No pun intended.

As for the little pieces created for Project Postcard, I'm afraid I can't show them to you. At least not in full until after the event. But I can make a silly warped image of them...

Assuming I don't run into any more press-related disasters I expect to have this new piece underway tomorrow, so hey! It looks like we might be getting back to our regularly scheduled... schedule. Stay tuned!

A little of this and a little of that...

The loon linocuts are still drying on the rack... getting close, but we've been really humid here this week so the last ink layer is still a little bit tacky.

In the meantime I'm keeping plenty busy! This past week I gave a quick Intro to Linocut workshop at the Maine Coastal Islands National Wildlife Refuge's headquarters in Rockland. The workshop was a nice wrap-up for my show there, which came down on Thursday.

The workshop was sponsored by the Friends of Maine Coastal Islands, a local non-profit that supports the Refuge's mission with education and outreach programs. 

We were sold out for the program, and the participants did such an amazing job creating small prints in a VERY short amount of time (about 90 minutes) that we're looking at scheduling another workshop this winter.

In the week ahead I'll be spending a lot of time up in Rockland, facilitating a week-long field sketching workshop through the Farnsworth Art Museum. If you've never visited the Farnsworth, you owe it to yourself to do so the next time you find yourself on the coast of Maine. The museum has an extensive collection of work by the Wyeth family and hosts spectacular visiting exhibitions as well. (Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals is there right now... I think we'll spend a little time drawing them at some point this week!)

Back in the studio I'll be working on small, temporarily secret linos for Project Postcard at the opening of Birds in Art at the Woodson Art Museum in early September. What to do, what to do?

Time Out for Arts and Birding

Sketching in the flower garden, Hog Island Audubon Camp

The loon linocut sits waiting to be completed, and it will have to sit for one more week before I can get back in to the studio.

It has to be something pretty special to drag me away when a piece is as close to completion as the loon is, and Hog Island Audubon Camp is definitely special.

I've been traveling from Colorado to Maine to be an instructor at the camp since 2008. The commute is a lot shorter now that I live nearby, but that doesn't diminish the magic of island time.

This past week's session was Arts and Birding, and I was fortunate to team teach the drawing and painting track with the brilliant Jean Mackay. Campers spent a fun week practicing sketching and watercolor skills, working both in the field and in the lab. We hiked to beautiful locations and explored sea life in the intertidal zone, and of course we took a boat trip out to see puffins. Because what's Maine without puffins?

Tomorrow the campers arrive for Educator's Week, so there's more adventure to be had. But next weekend I'll be back in the studio and happily putting the last few passes on the loon. Stay tuned!

Drawing from the specimen collection (and, yes... they always looked this serious!)

Sharing work at nightly salon

Looking for sketching subjects at low tide

Obligatory puffin shot

Evening light at Hog Island

Girls in Science at Herring Gut Learning Center

It was my great pleasure this past week to work with the great staff at Herring Gut Learning Center to present their Girls in Science event.

Sixth grade girls from area schools spent their day learning from scientists and a certain natural history artist/illustrator you may know. (Ahem.) Guest speakers included a local kelp farmer, renewable energy and water quality experts, an algae curator, and... me.

The young scientists built wind machines, identified and handled different types of seaweed, fed baby lobsters, dissected squid, looked at phytoplankton under the microscope, and did some drawing and printmaking based on their observations. I spent two action-packed and fun days at Herring Gut, and enjoyed watching these young women exercising their curiosity and exploring possibilities.

Field sketching

Studying stones below the Marshall Point lighthouse

Printmaking!

Field Sketching 101 with the Central Colorado Conservancy

Pretty much anything can happen with the weather in a Rocky Mountain spring. Twice last week I found myself making long drives in bad weather: wet, sloppy snow that thankfully didn't pile up much on the roads but which compromised visibility and gave me splitting headaches.

But I remain convinced that sparkling days are just around the corner, and what better way to celebrate outdoor adventures than with a field sketching workshop?

I've teamed up with the Central Colorado Conservancy to offer a half-day Field Sketching 101 class at the Boxcar Ranch in Chaffee County on Saturday, May 13. If you're in the area and interested in learning new skills or dusting off some old ones, I encourage you to grab a sketchbook and join us.

Registration can be made through the Conservancy, more information is available at the Central Colorado Conservancy website.

Spring Fever Hits the Studio

Yep. I've got it BAD.

73 F. Today's temperature was 73 (count 'em) lovely degrees. Even better? No wind. I threw open a few windows and tried to focus on tasks at home this morning, but I. Just. Couldn't.

So I gave up trying to be virtuous, grabbed my journal, and headed down to the river. I did walk there, a round trip of about 2.5 miles, so I told myself I scored at least a few points in the getting-some-exercise column.

There were a LOT of people down by the river this morning (clearly suffering from the same malady), so I tucked myself into a more-or-less hidden spot behind the bandshell and made a little drawing of the F Street bridge over the Arkansas River.

F Street bridge, downtown Salida

My semi-hidden spot behind the bandshell.

It felt quite nice to get out with my journal for a bit, especially since my practice has been sadly neglected through the winter months.

After my little field trip it was easier to work on projects in the studio, most importantly on a long-overdue birthday gift. It was great fun to carve some single-color linocuts, and then to play with the arrangement of the two separate blocks on different kinds of paper. (Full disclosure: the seated toad was carved a while back for another project. The leaping toad is a new block.)

Lino-toads

I also pushed around a few ideas for new color linos, although I haven't committed to anything yet.

Tomorrow, however, I'll be back to indulging my restlessness with a trip to the Monte Vista National Wildlife Refuge. The trip to MVNWR, stopover site for several thousand sandhill cranes, is a spring ritual, but this year it's gotten a bit out of control. Tomorrow will be my third trip there in 10 days. Is it any wonder I'm not getting much work done?

How can I resist THIS, though?

Yes! All cranes!

See? Not my fault. Wildlife spectacle is not to be missed, and with (ahem) spectacular spectacle weather, it would be pretty much criminal not to take advantage of the opportunity. That's my story, anyway, and I'm sticking with it. Monday will be a perfectly good day to tackle the to-do list.

Maybe.

First week of January... It's time to think about the SUMMER!

We're "enjoying" a full-blown winter storm here in the Heart of the Rockies today. Howling wind, single-digit temps, horizontal snow.

So of course it's a great day to think about a sunny island off the coast of Maine, where I'll be an instructor for a couple of programs in June and July!

Registration is underway for all the programs at Hog Island Audubon Camp: Ornithology programs for adults, bird and marine studies for teens, family camps... and my personal favorites – Educators' Week and Arts & Birding. Scholarships and early registration discounts may still be available, so be sure to check out those links as well.

Program descriptions below, but feel free to contact me if you have any questions. I hope to see some of you on the island this summer!

2016 Arts & Birding guest instructor and National Geographic illustrator
Jonathan Alderfer helps participants understand bird and feather anatomy.

Arts & Birding 
June 11-16
Immerse yourself in the sights, sounds, and rhythms of life on an island on Maine’s stunningly beautiful rocky coast! You’ll find plenty of creative inspiration in the company of artists who share an enthusiasm for birds and nature and you’ll be able to learn from some of the country’s best photographers and artists. This program includes fun birding adventures, as well as more in-depth study in your choice specialty of photography or sketching/painting.

We’ll explore the island’s spruce forest, tide pools, and striking vistas, and take a boat trip to Eastern Egg Rock to see Atlantic puffins. The week includes opportunities to learn new skills through your choice of workshops on photography or sketching, journaling and painting. We will also offer longer blocks of time for you to immerse yourself in your art. This program is ideal for beginners as well as avid birders, artists and photographers. No experience or talent needed! Just a desire to experience and enjoy birds in fresh, new ways.

Hog Island tidepool

Island view as the tide recedes

Sharing Nature: An Educator's Week
July 16-21

Learn practical approaches and add inspiration to your environmental education curriculum during this action-packed program. Our experienced and enthusiastic instructors share their favorite approaches, methods, and activities for engaging both children and adults with nature.

Workshops using techniques in art, music, theater, journaling, and other disciplines will be presented, as well as a host of classic Audubon Camp field trips, including a boat trip to the restored Atlantic Puffin and Tern colony on Eastern Egg Rock, intertidal explorations, and hiking through Hog Island's unspoiled spruce-fir forest. These experiences provide a wonderful opportunity to be learning outside in a beautiful setting, while also considering how you can take back some of these insights and methods to your students back home. We'll be exploring citizen science, creating some inquiry-based lessons on birds and other topics, and demonstrating both low and high-tech methods of teaching.

Back to Colorado, back to work!

It's been about a week since I returned from Maine to Colorado. The journey itself was epic, as I ended up being awake and in motion for about 36 hours straight. Ooph. My last flight reached Denver just before 1:00am local time (so 3:00 am by my east-coast-regulated internal clock) and there was still the 3-plus-hour drive through the mountains to go!

Luckily I had a friend willing to drive my car from Salida to Denver at that hour and we made the trip back through the mountains without mishap. My one consolation for all this late-night travel? We made the drive accompanied by the peak of the Perseid meteor showers! Once we cleared the light pollution of the Front Range, the sky was clear and the moon had set.  We stopped for about 20 minutes or so at the top of 10,000-foot Kenosha Pass... amused to find almost two dozen cars already there. (You have to understand that Kenosha Pass is probably 90 minutes from Denver and at the top of South Park... the gateway to a whole lot o' nothin'. It took some effort for folks to get up there.)

I wish I had some nice photos to show you... but hey! It was DARK!

We pulled in to Salida and I unloaded the car just as the sun came up, and then of course I found myself unable to go to sleep. So I just stayed up. Went to the grocery store at 6:00 am. Refueled the car. Started the laundry. Tackled all the little things that need to be done when you've been away for a long time.

And then it was back to the studio STAT! I had another workshop to prep for AND the deadline for Project Postcard at the Woodson Art Museum was fast approaching. Linoleum crumbs were hitting the table almost before my socks were out of the dryer.

I finished two small hand-painted linos and got them shipped to Wisconsin, but since the images for Project Postcard (which takes place during the opening weekend of the Birds in Art exhibition) are supposed to be secret, this is all I can show you until mid-September:

With that task accomplished I tackled the prep for a day-long Illustrated Journal workshop at the Rocky Mountain Land Library's Buffalo Peaks Ranch. It seemed reasonable that preparations for such a workshop should include doing my own journal entry, so I spent some time with all the "weeds" that are blooming in the construction site next door. I haven't managed to sort out their names yet, but here are the brave flora holding their ground amidst chaos:

Embiggenable with a click

The workshop was yesterday, starting with a chilly and overcast morning that quickly gave way to blue skies and perfect temps. By the time I headed home the wind was up and the rain began just as I pulled back in to Salida. In all it was a perfect Colorado summer day: A little bit of many kinds of weather... and sketchbooks.

Clouds and cloud shadows over Buffalo Peaks Ranch

This week it's back to work on the snow scene linocut that I started in June, a show application, a show DEADLINE, and hopefully a day afield with the Land Trust of the Upper Arkansas. (More sketchbook... yay!) I need to balance my urge to cram as much summer as possible into these last days of August with my need to address the looming deadlines... not so easy when I want to be everywhere at once. 

The Maine Event, 2016 version

There's been some serious neglect going on here at Brush and Baren and apologies are definitely in order. The pace of the last few weeks has allowed for the occasional Instagram or Facebook post (mostly because one auto-posts to the other), but a format requiring thought and articulation? Not so much.

I'm in the east! The eastern US, anyway. I've been on the coast of Maine for just over two weeks, running amok with back-to-back sessions at Hog Island Audubon Camp.

Warming up in my own journal on an overcast arrival day.

First up was Arts & Birding, a week of sketching and painting skill-building, bird anatomy drawing, and trying to put it all together in the field. Another group was also learning and practicing photography skills, and each evening before dinner we came together for an informal salon. It was great fun to see and share in everyone's work.

Evening salon in the Fish House

Arriving with our Arts & Birding campers was our third Bingham Cottages Artist-in-Residence, writer Alex Dunn. Alex spent two weeks off the grid out at the cottages, coming back to camp in the evenings to share our evening meal and even to conduct some interviews as part of his book project. (And okay, to have a shower and use the wifi, too.)

Unfortunately I was so busy during Arts & Birding that I didn't have time to take many photos... a situation that improved only slightly during the following week's Educators camp.

Field sketching in the island's hummingbird garden.

Makers on the beach at Sand Cove, Hog Island Audubon Camp

One night during Ed Week we explored night activities... astronomy, insects, games... and bioluminescence! There are luminescent critters in Muscongus Bay, and it's SO fun to lie on your stomach on the dock, gently swirl the water with your hand, and watch the sparkles! I wish I could get a photo of it to share with you... but I'm afraid you'll have to settle for the full moon over Crow Island.

Full moon rises over nearby Crow Island.

While camp sessions are now over for me this season, my time on the east coast is not! This week I'll travel down to Massachusetts for a few days to teach a workshop and present a lecture at a reception for my work at the Museum of American Bird Art at Mass Audubon. Then it's back to Maine for Hog Island Audubon Camp's 80th Anniversary celebration and to welcome the island's next Artist-in-Residence, Sean Murtha. Whew! Another wild summer vanishes like a guillemot carrying a red rock eel.  (You don't think that's too esoteric a reference, do you?)

Of course it's friends and colleagues who make the time here extra-special, and despite our chock-a-block schedules we always try to sneak in a moment or two to just be together. Sometimes the moment for stopping all work and just hanging out is completely obvious. Like this one:

Or this one.

And of course, this one.

Because what's a trip to Maine without sunsets and puffins and friends? Find your moment, wherever you are!