2025 Art Roundup

SK Winnicki
2 hours ago
9 min read

Updated: 13 minutes ago

This year I have been inspired by the artists in my life who remind me that I can view art as a process-- something I can do for the sake of practicing my techniques, flexing my creativity, and relaxing, rather than for a final product. As generative AI makes the claim that the product is more important than the process, I spent the year intentionally trying to internalize the opposite by doing art for the sake of the process rather than the product. At the end of the day, I ended up liking the products too, something that surprised me because I have not tried to make any art since high school.

In the springtime, I encountered a White-tailed Deer fawn in the city park behind my house. I had been very stressed and overwhelmed by political news at the time, so the appearance of a beautiful young deer felt like a surprise blessing. You can find photos of the fawn from that day on the Photos tab of this website. However, within a few days I found the fawn deceased in the park. I tried to ignore my grief for a few days, but then it spilled out in a marathon art session. I first drew the deer as I found it, in the undergrowth, peaceful and unblemished.

Colored pencil sketch of a very young deer fawn laying peaceful and dead in green undergrowth plants, with some yellow flowers gently placed on top of her. The sketch is amateurish but still identifiably a deer.

Next I drew the dead fawn waking up in a magical timeless forest where all the spring ephemeral flowers are always in bloom. I was not trying to make a shareable final product; to be honest I was not really focused on the art aspect at all, but rather my need to work through my grief and anger. It was like I was possessed! Hours later, I was nursing bleeding, blistered hands, and yet rather impressed that I could make something that resembled the vision in my head.

Second colored pencil sketch of the same dead deer fawn, in the same position, but now her eyes are opening up. She is surrounded by rough sketches of colorful Eastern forest ephemeral flowers, like bluebells and trillium. The colors are higher contrast and less realistic.

For the holidays, I decided that an economical gift for friends and family could therefore be a quick drawing of something I shared with them during the last year. I am most comfortable drawing birds, so I decided to choose a bird to draw for each person. In order of when I saw each bird:

This year I saw my first Short-eared Owls in Ohio, first at the OSU airport and then in Lorain County Ohio. Because my family lives near Lorain, they went to see the owls there without me, and I was over the moon that they were excited enough to look for them and then send me photos (my family are "not birders" but sure do a lot of birding for non-birders). I drew this one for my sister Emily, who said she really enjoyed seeing them.

Colored pencil sketch of a Short-eared Owl on a white background. The owl is intricate brown and black on the back and wings, pale white on the belly. It has a round head with expressive yellow eyes with bold black around them like eye makeup. Its feet are hidden under its fluffy feathers.

A few weeks later I drove up there and joined my mother, returning to the fallow field in Lorain where the owls were spending the winter. There were at least ten owls there, probably more. It was amazing to watch them hunt, bother each other, and flap around like giant moths. Even though we were freezing, I was delighted to share the same owls with my mom. Therefore, I drew the Short-eared Owls twice, so that my mom also had an owl print.

Colored pencil sketch of a Short-eared Owl in flight. The background is especially amateurish, with dark blues in the back suggesting a distant forest and beige and brown below, suggesting a snowy field. The owl has dark brown wings on top and white below, and is looking at the photographer with bold yellow eyes.

Every year, I survive the long cold end of winter by seeking out dancing American Woodcocks in March. This year, I joined my friend and colleague Anna Rose to watch the woodcocks dance at Battelle Darby Metropark in Columbus Ohio. It took them longer to start dancing than I'd anticipated, so I grew anxious waiting to hear their famous "peent" after sunset, and I was delighted when they finally emerged from the prairie grass to do their displays. Afterwards, we all went out for celebratory ice cream, which I will continue to do after woodcock walks for the rest of my life. When Anna successfully defended her Master's thesis this December, I drew her a peenting woodcock. She is an amazing artist (check out her work here: https://annarosepaints.com/) so I was very intimidated drawing art for a professional, but I love woodcocks so much that I like the result at least!

Colored pencil sketch of an American Woodcock, a beige, brown, and gray bird, camouflaged with fallen leaves in the understory. its beak is long and pink, open in their characteristic peent display posture. It is on a white background.

By April, spring migration is underway in Central Ohio. My colleague and friend Devin Mingesbruney convinced me to take a break from obsessively birding my backyard patch to try Duranceau Park in Columbus. The park was loaded with Butterbutts (Yellow-rumped Warblers), but also had my first Black-throated Blue Warbler for Columbus. At my previous homes in Kansas and Illinois, this species was quite rare; in Central Illinois I had to really work to find at least one every spring. I could not understand why the other birders around us were not more excited to see it, but it turns out they are just not as uncommon in Central Ohio! I ultimately saw something like 18 this year, most of them in my backyard park, but I was still delighted with that friendly first one that I managed to spot with my friends! I drew him for Devin.

Colored pencil sketch of a Black-throated Blue Warbler male perched on a stick, in front of a white background. The bird is white below and iridescent blue on the back, with black on its face, throat, and sides.

That Black-throated Blue Warbler was also the only bird that I managed to mess up so badly that I had to redo-- I tore the first attempt while trying to erase a blue smudge. I cut and pasted the work-in-progress but decided it still did not look nice enough to give as a gift. However, I finished the piece for myself, so I also have an art piece to remember my record-setting BTBW year!

Similar colored pencil sketch of a Black-throated Blue Warbler male on a stick in front of a white background. The colors are a little darker in this version, and you can see a faint outline where I had cut most of the bird and stick out from a previous attempt and glued it onto the white paper.

In May, birders from Ohio and beyond flock to The Biggest Week in American Birding festival in the northwest of the state. When I was a child, I went up there with the Ohio Young Birders Club.

After I left for college, my mom continued making an annual trip up to the festival, typically on Mother's Day as an excuse to invite my siblings along. This is the first year that I have been back in Ohio for May, so I joined them for the first time on the annual Mother's Day trip. Every year my mother especially wants to see a Scarlet Tanager, so I drew her the one that we all saw together this year.

Colored pencil sketch of a male Scarlet Tanager clutching a vertical stick, in front of a white background. The bird is vivid scarlet, with black wings and tail, and I tried to add red tones into the black so it wasn't as flat.

My sister Anna, angry about US political news and ever facetious, kept pointing out the birds with "American" in their common names. She replaced the "American" with "Venezuelan" for her favorite warbler, the American Redstart, calling each one a Venezuelan Redstart. I drew her a redstart, and used the Avibase database to look up the local names for American Redstarts in Venezuela. According to Avibase, they are known as Candelita Migratoria there ("little candle" and "migratory," as they only spend the winters in Venezuela). The final version of this art piece says "Candelita Migratoria" in the bottom left corner, making it a Venezuelan American Redstart.

Colored pencil sketch of a mature male American Redstart, seen from behind and below, on a stick in front of a white background. He is a brilliant bird, black on top and white below with bright fiery orange on his shoulder, wings, and tail. His tail is spread, catching the sun. I put lots of purple in the black sections to make them shine.

In June, my brother got married at Allardale Park in Medina, Ohio. He and his wife love cats, so their wedding was casual and cat-themed. As we set up for the wedding at the Allardale lodge, I laughed as I watched Gray Catbirds in the bushes. Because I can't figure out how to draw fur I couldn't draw a cat for my sister-in-law, so I instead drew a catbird outside of this wedding venue. I don't like doing background work, but hopefully she gets the idea!

Colored pencil sketch of a red building with a dramatic wood entranceway and a gray roof reminiscent of a barn. There are shrubs in front and trees behind, amateurishly rendered here as rough green blobs. In front is a sleek gray bird with orangish under his tail and black on the top of his head, a Gray Catbird. He is perched on a thorny branch that seems to come out of nowhere in the foreground.

My brother's piece is the only bird that I didn't also see this year. He went to Iceland in the summer to visit friends and came back delighted by the Razorbills he saw there. It's hard to find Razorbill merchandise at local Ohio art fairs, so I did my best to draw him a Razorbill on the misty coast of Iceland. I remember being delighted with them on a family to trip to Maine years ago, so I have seen them with my brother, he just does not remember the birds I pointed out on a trip in 2012!

Colored pencil sketch of a Razorbill, a black and white auk-like seabird, perched on some amateurishly rendered gray rocks with a pale blue background behind. He is mostly black, with some decorative white stripes on his face, back, and wings. I added some purple and green to the black to give a hint of iridescence.

In September, I joined my father on a trip to Punxsatawney, Pennsylvania. He loves Groundhog Day and wants us to share that with him, but the idea of standing outside before dawn in Pennsylvania in February is...unappealing to me. However, every September the town hosts its annual groundhog picnic, where Phil drinks his Elixir of Life that keeps him immortal (iykyk). A Midwestern picnic in September sounded more appealing to me (cornhole, corn-on-the-cob, college football, etc.) so I joined him for that trip. Dad was delighted to show me the famous stage at Gobbler's Knob from which Phil makes his annual weather prediction, and I was delighted to see a migrating Ovenbird on the lawn from the stage. This piece is therefore that combination; an Ovenbird with the stage in the background.

Colored pencil drawing of an Ovenbird, a gray-brown bird with a white belly, black stripes on the throat and belly, white around a big eye, and caramel and black stripes on the head. He has long pink legs he is using to perch on a branch in the foreground. Behind him is an amateurish rendering of the famous stage at Gobbler's Knob, with a sign declaring it home of Phil, a stump up front from which the groundhog emerges in February, and some wicker-like backboards. It looks fuzzy and dreamlike relative to the sharp Ovenbird in the foreground.

For the last decade, my dad and I have spent a week in South Carolina in the late fall/early winter (we originally went New Years weekend, now we go on Thanksgiving because it is easier to get time off of work). We spend much of that time birding, getting our annual fix of the coastal wetland and shoreline species. This year one of his friends joined us who was not a birder. While she seemed mostly bemused at our extremely slow bird-photography walking pace, she did point out a gorgeous Yellow-crowned Night Heron snagging crabs near a path. It's the first one I've seen in South Carolina, and the first one my Dad has every seen anywhere, so we were quite delighted. I drew her the heron, partly in apology for all the time I spent birding on the trip.

Simple colored pencil sketch of an adult Yellow-crowned Night Heron on a white background. The heron is mostly blue-gray, except for its yellow legs and black head with yellow on the ground and white on the cheek. Its eyes are blood red and look a bit annoyed. Overall it is a stocky small heron.

Of all the species we look for every year in South Carolina, our biggest target is always my beloved Black Skimmers. I was obsessed with them as a kid because of their goofy illustration in my Sibley Guide to Birds of North America. When we used to visit Cherry Grove in the northern portion of the state, we really had to look for them in the winter. However, this year we were on Hilton Head Island, farther south and therefore a better place for wintering Black Skimmers. Our first night there we were at a wetland looking for Clapper Rails at sunset when we heard a sudden chorus of barking, honking noises. Binoculars revealed it to be a flock of hundreds of skimmers above the nearby inlet, headed out to the open water to fish at nightfall. By the time we ran to the shore they had gone, but we staked it out the next day, and got to spend almost an hour watching them skim the water as the sun set. We've never seen that many, which were that active or that close to us! So I also drew the skimming Skimmers for Dad.

Colored pencil drawing of a tern-like Black Skimmer, flying over wave-disturbed ocean water. The bird has very long slender wings, black on the uppersides and silvery-white below. Its body is white and small relative to the wings, except for the top of its head, which is black, obscuring its eyes. Its beak is red-orange near the face and black at the tips. The upper half is shorter than the lower half, but you cannot really tell because the lower half is in the water as the bird skims for aquatic prey. The water is soft, blue-gray, with a hint of pink, intended to suggest the soft color of the ocean right after sunset, when these birds start to forage.

I spent most of December living with my mom, awaiting a roof replacement and a sewage line replacement on my rental in Columbus Ohio. I joined her on a trip to Lodi Ohio, looking for Snow Buntings. No luck on the buntings, but we did see Horned Larks, a species I always associate with Christmas at my Grandma's house in Northwest Ohio. So I drew my mom a Horned Lark, as a thank-you for letting me and all my pets crash at her place for a month this year.

Colored pencil sketch of a Horned Lark on front of a white background. The bird is a soft light beige brown gray color, with a white belly. Its face is black, white, and yellow, with a black stripe extending to the back of the head to make a short horn, for which the bird is named. Its legs are short and gray, ending in a strange looking foot with a very long back toe nail.

I also made a bunch of goofy meme art for my siblings for Christmas, as a joke gift. Most of them are very specific memes that make no sense out of context (think: the University of Kansas mascot from the 1920s). However, I was not sure what to make for my sister-in-law, so I reproduced a classic Victorian Christmas card, the original seasonal meme gifts.

Quick colored pencil sketch of an old woodblock card featuring a hunting kitten, a sick-looking bird that may be a European Starling, and the phrase "A Christmas Greeting to You" above them. The cat is ready to pounce on the bird, which is very thin, sad, and holding up one foot like it is an orator.

In December, I was living with my mother (because of those rental house repairs), so I joined her for a free craft class at the local library. In one class we were given little stones to make ornaments of birds sitting on a branch. I made my mother and all four of her kids as Eastern Screech-owls for her.

Photograph of a big round piece of wood, with rings showing it was once the trunk of a sapling tree. It is hanging from some string. On it I've pasted a lichen-covered stick and some moss to look like a tree branch. On that tree branch are four smooth stones, crudely painted to look like little gray owls. The leftmost owl is larger, with stronger features, which I tried to make look like an adult plumage bird. The rest have fuzzier features like juveniles. The second from the right has hints of a rusty red, like a red plumage screech owl, and the bird on the right has hints of brown, like a chocolate morph screech owl.

For the next class class, I think we were supposed to be making felted snowpeople, but the instructor had a bunch of cookie cutter shapes for us to try. I used a domestic goose cookie cutter to make a felted Canada Goose, specifically one with a white "spectacle" on its face like a goose I like that hangs out outside of my office.

Felted flat ornament in the shape of a deep-bellied barnyard goose but with the coloration of a Canada Goose. The bird is brown, lighter on the belly, with a black neck. Its head has a white cheek patch.

Same felted goose ornament, now slightly turned so you can see more detail on the face, like a gray beak, white above a dark eye, and the white cheek patch.

I really enjoyed the felting process, so I gathered supplies and decided that I would make something for the Winnicki family white elephant gift exchange. The theme this year was "shop local! support local businesses/artisans and avoid tariffs" so, filled with hubris, I thought "perhaps I could be a local artisan." My aunt and great aunts collect Santa decorations, so I thought I could make a piece of Santa wall art. Well, it turns out one class at the library does not make you a local felting artisan; ultimately I liked the Santa because I knew how much I had worked on him, but I didn't find him to be gift exchange quality. I kept him for my own decorations.

Framed flat felted art piece of an amateurly rendered Santa Claus, in a beige coat and hat with gray fur trim, holding a brown bag over his shoulder, with red gloves. He is outside under a dark blue sky, with a snowy pine tree on the left and a few snowflakes falling.

Closeup on the felted Santa face, so you can see the slightly haunted looking felted eyes under the white eyebrows and the pink rosy cheeks over the mustache. His hair and beard are wispy and white felt.

Since that left with me no gift for the family white elephant, I started another felting project: a Brutus Buckeye ornament (if I can't make eyes that aren't cursed-looking, I might as well make something that should have cursed eyes). I see now why 3D felted items are so expensive at art fairs; the ornament took me twice as long to make as the flat felted Santa (about 15 hours of stabbing felt with a needle). Hopefully he will humor whichever relative ends up with him!

Because I am not a professional artist, I see no need to sell any of my art (it is just fun to give them away as little gifts!). However, I like to print scans of the flat colored pencil pieces out as magnets or pins, so if you are also interested I did post all of these drawings to my Redbubble shop where they can be printed as stickers, magnets, notecards, etc. You can find that here: skwinnicki.redbubble.com.

Screenshot from the linked Redbubble shop, showing the Black Skimmer drawing printed as a postcard for purchase.

But, more importantly, I hope sharing them all convinces you that you don't have to be a good artist to take joy in the process of producing art. Try it, it's more fun than I remembered it being!

2025 Art Roundup Gallery