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August 11, 2005  My Best Western As you might imagine I draw a lot of different birds over the course of a year. Even when I doodle, I doodle birds; usually these creations are seriously altered into bird-oid forms bearing only a remote resemblance to the real thing. (Some of these altered birds are to appear in a book next spring.) But, whether doodle or serious drawing, birds certainly entertain me as I render them in pen or paint. In order to cram even more information about birds into my psyche, I take any opportunity to study them further. Sometimes I draw from road or window-killed birds but I learned that such information, without studying the live bird, is often misleading. The posture and attitude of each bird species varies and only from the live bird can one find the suitable characteristics to make details come to life. Despite this fairly intense study of the subject, there is one bird that I never feel capable of rendering and that is the Western Tanager. I don’t know what it is about this species that eludes me. I have ample opportunity to watch them each year when they return to the yard after nesting. A female Western Tanager often comes to the back yard Saskatoon bush with an entourage of several fledglings, so I stare to my heart’s content from the north window, only feet from the birds. Granted this is not the resplendent plumage of the male Western Tanager I see but that doesn’t matter because structurally male and female birds are similar. The wing feather groups, tail, beak, legs, posture and body shapes are the same. Only the colour is different. As we slip into mid-August the Western Tanagers have again appeared in the yard. Yesterday a female arrived furtively and perched in a poplar sapling near the woodshed. It lingered, staring intently at the Juncos and Black-capped Chickadees as they splashed in the birdbath. I knew it wanted a drink or bath but was nervous about doing so. When some of the other birds moved off to preen their dampened feathers, the shy Western tanager flew into the lilac bush that shelters the bird bath. I dared not move as I sat in the vintage lawn chair hoping to catch a close look at this bird. At first it showed very little of itself and just when I had began to suspect that it had exited from the lilac bush without me seeing it, I heard a splashing of water. It was taking a bath. After only a few seconds of tossing water about, the Tanager was done. It hopped to a limb in clear view, cast a big doe-eye my way and whispered ‘I dare you to draw me.’ I quickly took stock of its features as I have done many times before. At times like this I sometimes try to focus by asking myself how it is that I know I am looking at a Tanager. The first feature that caught my eye was the beak. It is a heavy, conical affair with something of a fingernail colour to it at the base and a gray to orange-green near the tip. The eye of the Tanager caught my attention next. ‘The eye of a Tanager is big.’ I told myself to further absorb that feature. Until now I hadn’t realized that this might be a clue to rendering a Tanager more realistically...big eye, big beak. Next came the hard stuff. The body of a Western tanager is curiously distributed. It seems long... longish, and appears to droop. I knew that perception was going to pose problems. Birds are not seen ‘to droop’. They are usually seen as perky and ready to go, sitting head up. Unfortunately, under my gaze, a Tanager seems to droop; so drooped is it that I am forced to illustrate it as something of a hunchback. And I wonder why I can’t draw a Western Tanager. After a few seconds, the Tanager flew off and I wondered what I had learned from my latest encounter with this bird. In order to test myself I illustrated the Western Tanager for this column (appearing above.) You will notice I haven’t taken liberties with it, as I often do with other birds I draw for the column. In order to take liberties with any subject one must feel one has a grasp of its salient features, so much so that they can be exaggerated and still seem authentic. I feel no such familiarity with the Western Tanager. Yesterday, I heard myself state, in a conversation about art, that one is truly blessed if one finds, as subject matter, something that is endlessly challenging. With such a subject one could conceivably be forever learning; and learning as we all know, invigorates our lives. I guess I’ve found such a challenge in the Western Tanager and I should be thankful, not frustrated, by the beautiful but difficult piece of subject matter that it is. To e-mail Tom CLICK HERE To look at previous column CLICK HERE |
