On the twenty sixth of March, 1988, in anticipation of the imminent turtle season, I started my swamp sketchbook with a watercolor study of a pussy willow branch with opening catkins. I had been writing text for THE YEAR OF THE TURTLE since the autumn of 1986, making notes of drawings and watercolors I would do to accompany my writing.
As was the pattern throughout my twenty-two year book era, I did the vast majority of my writing and and art work while the turtles were in hibernation, generally mid to late October until late March or early April. As I worked on The Year of the Turtle I could not have imagined that four books were to follow in succession.
Over that same time period I devoted many days to reviews of the scientific literature, taking copious notes, with comments. I was also engaged in considerable correspondence, editorial and with colleagues, relative to my book.
My Swamp Sketchbook, in keeping with my penchant for using fairly informal materials in drafts and preliminary drawings and watercolors, is a Strathmore 400 artists’ series artist’s sketchpad; 9” x 12”. It shows some signs of the use to which it was subjected.
However, most of the pages are of exhibition quality. It is an exception to my pattern of working primarily during the cold months, my “indoor season”, as it involved studies from live turtles, newly collected plant specimens, and other subjects from the turtles’ active season.
They feature one of my favorite ways of working – combining pencil drawing with watercolor, often left in an unfinished, or preliminary study state, as they were to serve as references for the highly finished works with which I illustrated the book. Some of the images featured in this account of my Swamp Sketchbook have been cropped in order to show details more clearly.
An example of this is a page that I removed from the sketchbook to serve as the illustration for the back cover of SWAMPWALKER’S JOURNAL and as an object in my exhibition in the “Beyond Words…” exhibition at the Currier Museum in Manchester, New Hampshire, June- September, 20018.
(This splendid splendid installation is detailed in my page for the “‘Beyond Words’ Exhibition at the Currier Museum“.)
The page shown below was done on the twentieth of June, 1988. As with so many of the works in this sketchbooks, it comes in connection with a signal turtle find. She was the the first wood turtle I discovered in what was to become my main area of observations of this central species for the next thirty three years, and ongoing.
She was at the same time the first wood turtle I observed during her nesting, at 10:30 in the morning on the seventeenth. This experience is one of those I call an MDM – major Digs moment. My seasons have been rich with these. I consider this sheet of studies one of the best works in my very varied oeuvre as an artist.
Studies of a female wood turtle
Studies of a female wood turtle. pencil and watercolor. 12″ x 9″. 1988
There are eighty three pages with studies in varying degrees of completion, including finished watercolor portraits of spotted, wood, painted (hatchling), and Blanding’s turtles. There also fully rendered pencil drawings, and many less completely developed plant studies, watercolors and pencil drawings. There are five pages of pencil studies, with touches of watercolor, preliminary studies for watercolors I developed for publication in The Year of the Turtle.
Most of the pages were executed in 1988 and 1989; ten pages in 1990; and a few from 1992-2000. The finale was a three-page series of preliminary studies for my as yet unpublished children’s book, TURTLE’S JOURNEY, two in pencil and one in pencil with watercolor, dating from 2013.
I would be pleased to furnish examples additional to those shown with this text to principals with an interest in considering an acquisition of the sketchbook as part of an archive or, depending on circumstances, as a unique item.
I think at times of working on some of the studies, taking them to a more complete stage of development. But they are from a key time and place in my work, and I feel that it is better to have them stand as they are. I may yet, however, allow myself to return to one or two of the pages left blank for a work in the style of the sketchbook.
Pencil and watercolor study of a spotted turtle and water shield
This drawing is a preliminary study for a watercolor I did for YEAR OF THE TURTLE. Although it serves that for purpose, it is one of those I have been tempted to develop further with watercolor, but also leaving some pencil rendering to stand by itself in the composition.
I have long considered my Swamp Sketchbook to be integral to my core archive, united with my Digs Notebooks; material related to my five published books; and the Swamp Dialogs, etc.
But as my life’s work as artist, naturalist, and writer is ultimately interconnected, interwoven in a very real sense to constitute one work, the sketchbook could as well be an aspect of the book art and artist components of my archive quest. In the end, no part is truly separate from another in this three-part union.
However, the many archival institutions and university archives who have expressed keen interest in my archive have focused on text. That is to say, they would not be so likely to consider my art in the body of a collection.
This sketchbook is, however, a record of a pivotal period in my evolution as a naturalist. And it has an intimate bearing, as my field (“Digs’) notebooks have on my work as a writer. There are no clear-cut demarcations among these aspects of my life’s work. I discuss this further in my Book Art section.
Therefore, it may be that this sketchbook would be of greater interest to a museum, art archive, or private collector. Despite complexities, considerations in various directions, I am quite willing to discuss possibilities with any party who might have an interest in it as a single acquisition.
Ideally, it would be profoundly meaningful to me to have essentially the entire archive reside in one accessible place. But I realize the remoteness of such a possibility. This reality pertains to any aspect of my collection, although I have a core body, representing the three aspects, as my primary goal.
Pencil and watercolor studies of the head of a spotted turtle
A portrait, in essence, as are all the studies I do of the heads of turtles. Pencil and Watercolor. 12″ x 9″. 1989.
Basking painted turtle and waterlily
Watercolor of the head of a male wood turtle
Pencil studies, front and side of a female spotted turtle.
These drawings are of “Ariadne”, one of a half dozen or so turtles I allowed myself the conceit of putting a name to, a habit I quickly dropped, as I am not at all anthropocentric in my encounters with and observations of turtles. I recorded this female over a period of at least eighteen years, crossing paths with her with unusual frequency. I write about her in my books, with an especially moving, for me, last chapter in SELF-PORTRAIT WITH TURTLES, on the occasion of seeing her nesting at dawn.
Study of red-winged blackbird
These harbingers of spring, arriving at the first open water, are also signs for me of the imminence of the appearance of the first spotted turtle of the year, emerging from a long hibernation. Their melodious communal calls are an accompaniment to my earliest wadings and wanderings of the realms of the spotted and wood turtles.
The unfortunate fate of this one, who flew against a window of our gallery, provided me the opportunity of this intimate observation and pencil drawing, with touches of watercolor.
My drawings and watercolors in this sketchbook, and those produced to illustrate my books, as well as numerous individual studies, are a way of honoring, celebrating, and remembering the animals and plants so central to me over my long history with the places of the turtles.
My Five Published Books
Trout Reflections
Following the Water
Year of the Turtle
Self-Portrait With Turtles, A Memoir
Swampwalker’s Journal
Hand Bound Books
A Book of a Number of Hours
A Book of Winter Buds
A Book of Winter Branches
Borradores
Landscapes – January 20, 1978 – April 1978
Variations: February 1, 1967 – August 1, 1968
Visions: Drawings and Paintings: 1976 – 1988
Exhibitions
“Seldom Seen” Exhibition at the Davidow Center
“Beyond Words” Exhibition at the Currier Museum
Galleries
“Seldom Seen” Gallery
David’s Wildlife Studies Sketchbook
Virtual Gallery of Art Produced for My Five Books
“Regarding Women Regarding…” Introduction
Sketchbook Gallery: 4/1/1985 – 10/14/1987
Swamp Sketchbook
The Swamp Dialogs
Drawings and Watercolors Produced to Illustrate my Published Books
CODIT – Compartmentalization of Decay in Trees