Wow did we get a storm yesterday!!
Looks like a couple of funnel clouds touched down outside of Toronto and the high winds here in the Toronto area did tremendous amount of damage. About 22,000 people in the area are without hydro and hundreds have been evacuated because of damage done to natural gas lines. 88,000 across Ontario are dealing with no power. The BBC has an excellent clip on the storm BBC coverage on Ontario storm
Funny, when I came out of the library yesterday I looked at the sky and said “somebody’s going to get a tornado!” I remember how the sky looked back in 1985 when a tornado tore through Barrie, Ontario. I was working in a 7-11 store in Burlington then (a weird chapter in my life. I’ll tell you about it one day). I will always remember how terribly, terribly dark it became. And as dark as we were in Burlington (@136km south of Barrie) on that May, it was completely black to the north were the Tornado came down. The skies rarely get that black and yesterday was almost as bad. The sudden drop in temperature told me all I needed to know. That was the other thing I remember from that day – how quickly the weather shifted from muggy to cool. In minutes the humidity vanished and the temperature dropped. That is never good.
There is a lot of clean up needed today. A couple of trees in the park near me are severly damaged – one looks like it may have taken a direct hit by lightening. The others lost a lot of large branches. But we were lucky – very little damage done in the area.
Earlier in the day, I wandered down to my neighbourhood Starbucks where I do most of my sketching lately. I like the staff there – they make me laugh and are masters at making my latte nice and foamy. I tend to sulk if I don’t get the correct amount of foam and the staff there make a wonderful production out of getting it just right for me. We are going to have a “Foam Off” – where the staff are going to compete in a contest to see who can create the most exquisite foam. I haven’t decided upon the award yet, but I’ll post the photos and let the public vote on them. I’ll let you know when the contest starts. But I digress… as usual…
I did a few more bird heads. I’m gearing up to doing the entire body. It could get messy…
First the complete sketches:
I’ve begun putting the name of the bird underneath because I want to know what it was I drew. My bird identification is shaky at the best of times. The blue jay came out rather nicely although I could have smoothed out the feathers beneath his eyes a bit more. As it is, he looks a bit tired and cranky. I had to work on his neck and chin area a lot. He kept looking like he had a terrible goiter. If you click on it, you can see I still had difficulties just under the beak. I think I should have shaded the area a bit more to show some more depth. The gnat catcher is okay. Another difficulty I tend to have is crowding the eye to the beak. The eye should be edged to the left a couple of millimetres. He is also a bit too buff in the chest area. He looks like he’s the Arnold Schwarzenegger of the song bird world. I couldn’t seem to get the perspective right, I think. If I had shaded the chest to show more depth, he wouldn’t be suffering from a terminal case of birdie steroids. A very light hand in shading the area would likely bring out more on both birds and give them that depth they are missing. The beaks are a lot better than that on my poor little tittmouse from yesterday’s post. Next big project is to start shading in the feather markings more acuratly.
Now… this is what I’m working on today (or tomorrow)
A nice cowbird
and another bluejay
These two show you how I start the sketch. I begin at the eye and then draw a rough outline around it so I can get the perspective correct. Well that and to make sure I don’t draw myself off the edge of the page, which I did a lot in my very early attempts last month. Oh give thanks to Errato for the shredder!!
I will likely work on the birds today. I’ll post them when I’m done with them.
