The Mythical and the Mundane

The massive flight muscles of their breasts glowed hot from working the wings.

And the crows’ heads were lit up like holiday lights. The energy of thought and coordination illuminated a darkening sky like strings of flying light bulbs.

Is this the beginning of a fantastical story inspired by the mythic crows of our storytelling traditions? In legend, the crow is often a symbol of intelligence, associated with wisdom and knowledge. A crow with its head lit up by thought would be apt imagery.   

In reality, though, the text is an excerpt from Gifts of the Crow by John Marzluff, a professor from the University of Washington whose scientific research involved him pointing a heat-sensitive video camera one night at a flock of crows.

This week, I’m using dark-field monotype techniques in the studio. The process is delightfully tactile: First, you roll the ink onto the plate (clear plastic) and, with the help of the lightbox, make sure it is evenly applied and sufficiently thick. Next, you make the image by removing the ink. In this case, an old brush, credit card, and baby wipe were put into service. Finally, the print is made by placing the paper over the plate and rubbing vigorously (I used a barren).

For the one above, some pinecone bits were still in the paint on my plate (leftover from a previous and unwise attempt to make texture). As I pressed the paper onto the inked plate, the tiny debris blocked the paint transfer, leaving some areas white — “lit up like holiday lights”— on the resulting image.

Well, that works.

The print above was made on medium-weight Pacon Bright White Sulfate paper. Other than the debris incident, the ink transferred just fine. I had less luck with heavier papers.

For the next image, I inked up the plate anew and attached Stonehenge (250-weight) printing paper for the transfer.

The resulting image was barely perceptible. 

I returned to the plate, this time inking the crow’s head heavily with a brush — more in the technique of a light-field monotype, where you paint directly onto a clean (“light field”) plate.

The second print yielded better results. When I peeled the paper back to examine the image, I found that the ink for the head had spread. Curiously, I was looking not at a crow but another bird — a goshawk. T.H. White’s beloved Gos, who later inspired the goshawk in The Once and Future King), I was sure of it.

With the addition of a curved Persian beak and more contrasting feathers, there he was.

Back in my world, crows are everywhere—and I'm not talking about not the mythic variety. Crows are the first sounds I hear in the early morning. In spring, they mob eagles flying over the heronry just down the road. In summer, they mob the pear trees in my backyard. Year-round, I catch them bringing dead fish to wash in my (otherwise pristine) birdbath.

I rather like all the crow activity. Gives me plenty of opportunity to collect reference photos for media studies. Here are a few that made it onto paper this week.

Out for a Stroll

I did multiple drawings of crows on the page and then looked for ways to tie them together. The blue path worked.

However, the overall light and dark pattern still needs work to read as one image. I’ll get to that.

Crow personalities are coming through.

A closer look:

Gifts of the Crow: How Perception, Emotion, and Thought Allow Smart Birds to Behave Like Humans.  John Marzluff and Tony Angell (2012). 

What a delight to find a book so finely focused on crow behavior, the connection between people and animals (corvids in this case), and the ways we influence each other. And the fantastic drawings by Tony Angell, master illustrator and bird enthusiast. Thanks to my dear friend Penny for passing along the book. 

The Goshawk. T.H. White (2015). The first edition was published in 1951.

What is it about falconry that captures our imagination so? For me, it has something to do with the proximity to a bird of prey's intense agency and the freedom it embodies in flight. That, and the fact that falcons and hawks were always companions on quests. I love a good quest.