One of the great things that learning to draw teaches you is how to slow down and truly see. When we hurry about our business in the world, we can be quick to categorize and create mental representations, rather than examine the specifics of what we encounter. Drawing requires a kind of calm and alert attention. It summons the pleasure of the individual and the particular. With a bird as one’s focus, that might be the specific set of a beak or the structure of a single feather. It might be the dynamic between birds, whether playful, predatory, or companionable.
There’s so much pleasure to be had in Amy Tan’s drawings in The Backyard Bird Chronicles, partly because the book is a record of learning to see the natural world clearly. By turns elegant and humorous, her color pencil images signal her deep curiosity and love of the birds depicted. But her objective here is less to be authoritative about birds and more to raise questions and suggest moments. In one funny comic sketch called “Fledgling Scrub Jay Tales Verified 97.5% True,” Tan asks, “Do birds feel something akin to embarrassment?” The book closes with a perceptive, graceful portrait of an orange-crowned warbler, yellow-green, his beak tinted orange on its underside, his tail feathers velvety, perched on a branch.
We learn early on in the book that when she was 64, Tan took her first drawing classes and nature-journaling field trips with artist, naturalist, author, scientist, and educator John Muir Laws, experiences that profoundly affected her nature-journaling practice as we see it in The Backyard Bird Chronicles.
Tan writes, “The classes were not strictly about drawing. If anything, they had just as much to do with being curious, allowing us to return to childhood wonderment, when everything was seen as new. That was the focus for beginning our drawings. To wonder in depth, to notice, to question.” In one of his helpful and wise books, The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling, Laws calls on readers to take various mental steps that encourage the kind of curiosity on display in The Backyard Bird Chronicles, such as “Look for patterns, then find exceptions.” His idea is to identify patterns, but also to intentionally seek out exceptions to the patterns that can indicate how strong or weak the pattern is. He writes, “However, if you do not find exceptions when really looking for them, you might be onto something interesting. Sometimes exceptions provide even greater insight into the pattern.… Do the exceptions have something in common? Is there a pattern to the exceptions themselves?”
We’re pleased to welcome Laws to the California Book Club on September 18 to talk about The Backyard Bird Chronicles. Laws is also the author and illustrator of several other lovely books, including The Laws Sketchbook for Nature Journaling, The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds, The Laws Field Guide to Sierra Birds, Sierra Wildflowers: A Hiker’s Guide, and The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada. He also coauthored How to Teach Nature Journaling: Curiosity, Wonder, Attention with Emilie Lygren.
With more than 40 years of experience joining people, nature, and art, Laws is the cofounder and president of the Wild Wonder Foundation, which is dedicated to encouraging people to connect with nature and conservation “through attention, curiosity, art, science, and community.” He has also developed numerous interdisciplinary educational programs that teach students how to observe more rigorously and how to become more intentionally curious.
We’re looking forward to listening to Laws, Tan, and CBC host John Freeman in an illuminating conversation on Thursday, and we hope you join us.•
Join us on Thursday, September 18, at 5 p.m. Pacific time, when Tan will sit down with CBC host John Freeman and special guest Laws to discuss The Backyard Bird Chronicles. Register for the Zoom conversation here.
REVERSE GAZE
Read John Freeman’s essay on The Backyard Bird Chronicles and the wonders of bird-watching. —Alta
MARTIAL ARTS LEGEND
Journalist Gary Singh profiles Jeff Chang in connection with his book Water Mirror Echo: Bruce Lee and the Making of Asian America. —Alta
70 YEARS
Kepler’s Books will be celebrating its 70th anniversary on September 20 with a free, family-friendly block party that features live music, local food vendors, a raffle, and arts and crafts activities for children. An RSVP is required. —Kepler’s Books
BUY TICKETS!
Freeman and Rebecca Solnit will be in conversation at Litquake about California Rewritten on Wednesday, October 22, at 7:30 p.m at the Verdi Club in San Francisco. —Eventbrite
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