Going to the birds

Posted on | September 9, 2009 | Comments Off

Well, not literally … I haven’t drawn much in the past two weeks. I’m on a migraine medication that has given me fuzzy vision when it comes to close up work.  Ah side effects, you have to love them. On the plus side, it has meant very few migraines!!!  But I haven’t been able to see a lot of detail when I am drawing… a bit frustrating because it means many of my bird heads are coming out very lopsided. The fuzziness seems to have settled down a bit so I’m going to try birding again later tomorrow after work. I have to say, I was pleased to find today, when I was examining a few sketches, that my vision seemed a lot better.

I found an amazing magazine a couple of weeks back. If you are at all interested in backyard birds, grab a copy of the first issue of Backyard Birding. It’s published by the same folks that print Wildbird Magazine. It has over 100 pages of excellent photos of birds – a virtual bird bath of pictures to sketch. It has some great info on birds too. So many fine pictures to sketch I don’t know where to start.

I took the books on birds back to the library. I checked out some in hopes of finding some good info on how to tackle bird wings, but alas, I was let down. Lots of pretty pictures, but no real solid ideas on how to actually draw the beggars. My spread out wings are still in a sorry state, and definitely not for prime time viewing. Well, not my wings … you know what I mean.

I figured I was drawing so many birds, a squirrel was needed – what feeder is complete without one of these little bandits. This is pretty much the last picture I sketched before it became a wee bit too difficult to see what I was doing with a pencil.

From Catpaw’s Art work – animals

He’s pretty good. I abandoned him thought because I was having a difficult time seeing where the shadows should be. And, if you want a giggle look closely at his legs. Yup, a double leg going on there. Hard to see I’m sure I didn’t spot it until a day or two after doing the sketch. I simply couldn’t tell where to put the shadows and lines because of the fuzziness so the poor little squirrel ended up with both legs on one side. Let’s just call him my little mutant squirrel. If I had blurred the line on his leg more, and given his chin area more definition, the leg would have appeared on his far side. Or… I could simply erase the other leg and pretend I meant to do this. The suet was just beyond me at that point and that is when I gave up for awhile.

I did this little yellow warbler the day before:

From Catpaw’s Art work – birds

I took a bit of advice a kind reader sent me and used an H pencil to draw a faint outline of how the wing should look and where the pattern should be. Because the pencil is so light, I didn’t have to erase it after. I took an HB pencil after that and used it to shade in the darker parts, then I went to the 2B pencil and ran along the outline of the wing and adjusted it to suite the bird better. With a very light touch, I started to fill in the pattern and then applied more pressure to get the shadow on the layers of the wing. Not bad, I’m rather pleased with the wing. I wasn’t intending to sketch the leg in, but I began to feel a bit brave. I’m going to have to spend a day or two just drawing legs and claws so I can get a better feel for them.

I’m off to various parts of the city tomorrow to help someone pick out a new laptop. Afterwards I’ll settle down somewhere and see if I can draw again. I made a lame attempt this afternoon and wasn’t completely unhappy with my work. I was able to see what I was doing, although I kept compressing the birds heads so they looked oddly mishapen. Rather peculiar when you think about it. And kind of amusing when I looked at the sketches tonight. Nothing like a bad case of the giggles to end the day with.

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