Liebster Blog Awards

Recently, I've recieved the Liebster Blog award from two of my favourite fellow bloggers, Måns Sjøberg and Jose Sencianes. It is always an inspiration to be noticed, and especially by artists that I admire. Apparently, these are the rules of the Liebster Award: 1. Thank the person who gave you the award. 2. Link back to their blog. 3. Copy and paste the Liebster award to your profile. 4. Pick five blogs that you feel deserve to be in the spotlight. They must have 200 followers or under. 5. Blog about it and leave a comment for your nominations to let them know that you have chosen their blog.

So here I go! Even though it's hard to pick only five, I am going with these:

Måns Sjøberg. Måns was one of the main reasons why I started drawing birds again about 8 years ago, when I found his book on how to paint birds. His blog is always a lesson on the importance of keeping things simple!

Jose Sencianes. Jose is a Natural Born Field Sketcher. He has his own unice style, and is never afraid to use strong colours. He has a great knowledge of the birds he is drawing, as I experienced first hand when I had the chance to spend a day with him in Doñana last year.

Juan Varela. Juan is undoubtedly one of Europe's finest bird artists. His blog is a joy, and so is his web page, where the selection of field sketches is my personal highlight.

Antonio Ojea. Another Spanish artist who I admire! He is a genius in digital painting, but his watercolours are to me even more brilliant. 

Federico Gemma. For a field sketcher, Federicos blog is an absolute must. He has a unique, fluent style, and paints landscapes, buildings, birds and animals with great authority!

I would have liked to include artist like Szabolcs Kokay, Fransisco Hernandez, Pascalis Dougalis and Tim Wotton in this list, but I know that they've been awarded by others.

An owl again, and Eilat by internet.

I went to Jæren just over a week ago, for a meeting in the Norwegian Rarities Committee, with hopes for some quality birding along the November beaches. We had many hours in the field, mainly searching the coastline for new arrivals after a few days of winds from the east. Unfortunately, we didn't find any rare passerines, unlike the lucky birdwatcher who found an Isabelline Wheatear the day after our departure, just a few miles from where we had our meetings. We did, however, get to study a Hawk Owl, and a member of the committee (Oddvar Heggøy) found a Yellow-legged Gull, the first ever in the county of Rogaland.

We decided on a trip to Eilat in April 2013, and I've started to do some sketches from videos on the internet again, of species that we'll encounter during our stay in Israel. I am trying to pay more attention to "stance" than plumage, the birds are Isabelline Wheatear, Woodchat Shrike and Caspian Tern.

Owls

It's once every decade that I do any twiching (twitching means travelling to somewhere to see a spesific bird), but I make exceptions for Ural Owls. This huge raptor is extremely rare in Norway, with just a few known breeding pairs. They hardly ever venture outside of their territories, so when a young bird suddenly appears at a golf course just south of Oslo, it's major birding news. I went looking for it two days ago, but unfortunately, it decided that I was not worthy. The day before I left, I did some Youtube-sketching, just to get a feel of the bird. Now, that's all I'm left with, plus a sketch of I Tengmalm's I caught and ringed at Mølen last night (that's drawn from photos).

Alive, but not kicking

It's been a while since my last post. Summer has come and gone, and is never the most productive periode for me. Ideally, I should have painted more now, but I've had problems with my back for the last couple of months, and need time to get back to normal. I just managed to paint this raven, after having made the pencil sketch ages ago. It's fun to work with different shades of black, and my main focus in this one was to make the plumage look irredescent. Hopefully, I'll get some more work done in the weeks to come.

First attempt with acrylics

Where I work, I am able to do some painting and other artwork every now and then. I tried acrylics for the first time a while ago, as a part of a painting workshop. I will probably have a go again some time, it was fun working on a big canvas. This wasn't made from a field sketch, as you might imagine, I found a picture in an old book about fish!

May sketches

The past month has given some opportunities for outdoor sketching again. I've spent some time along the coast both in Vestfold (Hvasser) and Rogaland (Jæren), in beautiful weather. One of the birding highlights during May was an afternoon downfall of passerines in Hå (Jæren) in the end of May, where a small group of trees very close to the ocean suddenly held 15 Spotted Flycatchers, 2 Red-backed Shrikes, 4-5 Lesser Whitethroats, a few Redstarts, Willow Warblers and Whitethroats. Experiences like this doesn't come every year for me, and are always exiting.

Borrevannet

I went with Marianne to Borrevannet today, a very nice little lake close to the Oslo fjord, by the town Horten. The lake is, among other things, known for the raptor migration in spring. The weather was nice, with a clear sky and a rather cold breeze from north-east. Not to many birds around, and I spent some time sketching the landscape next to the lake. The Great Crested Grebe was the only water bird that came close enough for a few sketches.