I’m depressed…

Posted on | August 25, 2009 | Comments Off

Yes… I am… totally depressed. My jam didn’t jam. We are canning fruit and veggies for winter along with some jam. Everything has been going along toodly fine. Well everything except my lovely peach jam. Sigh … guess I can use it as pie filling during the long cold months. It’s ever so depressing when you have your tastebuds all geared up for a nice piece of toast with home-made peach jam and you are looking at a pot of peach soup. I had a similar problem with the peach chutney I made last week, but was able to recover and make it thicker. The problem is the peaches are just so damned juicy this year. We are going to have another kick at the peach jam can this weekend. That is after we finish doing tomatoes.

Let’s cheer up with by catching up my sketches.

I mistakenly called the little ovenbird a cowbird in a previous post. Anyway, here is a repeat of the preliminary sketch and the completed drawing. The size difference is soley due to how I scanned it in. As you can see in the preliminary sketch, I focus on the eye first and work my way out. Once I’m happy with the eye, I create a basic outline and then begin to fill in from there.

From Catpaw’s Art work

From Catpaw’s Art work

It’s interesting to see the pictures side by side. As you can see, I’m beginning to get a bit frisky and I’m moving beyond drawing just the heads. I’ve begun to try and sketch in some of the chest and back along with a bit more detail in the feather patterns.

Wings still baffle me. I’m not sure how to tackle them as yet.

I’m using 2 mechanical pencils, one with B lead for the light shading and outline and then I move to 2B for the shading and patterns on the bird. I gently layer up the levels of darkness until I’m happy. The mechanical pencils are excellent because they maintain a good sharp point and allow me to do some very fine, fussy detail on the feathers. I’m also experimenting with various strokes and pressure on the pencil to get the feathered look. I also have a good kneadable eraser which is excellent for dabbing along areas where the feathers should be lighter, or the eye. Just a few light touches create a nice effect.

Here’s the bluejay I was working on:

From Catpaw’s Art work

From Catpaw’ Art work

Yea…I got a chuckle out of the beak too. It’s not quite right and I’ll bet you are asking yourself “what’s wrong with it?” It took me about 1/2 an hour to put my finger on what it is. The jay looks like he’s pursing his lips (er…beak?). It’s angled down just a hair too much which gives him a slightly annal appearance. If I had angled it up just a bit the forehead wouldn’t look so slicked back and the beak would be better proportioned. Oh well….

I’m gearing up to tackle the wings by the end of the week. I’m still waiting for the book on how to draw birds to come in. I’m hoping it will help me with the wings, feet and get the patterns on the feathers down a little better. But I’m going to keep plugging along with my little flock.

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