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the foot bath (1 Viewer)

Strandman

Well-known member
Fine idea for a foot thread mooted by Jomo on Zac's thread above (well done Zac and keep persevering on those feet- you will learn to love them for the poise and boinginess they give your birds)..

I fished this crumpled buzzard out of the bin before I left work, as it has a definitely simple foot (pic binned as there was a second one above it that went too wrong for even me to post- image was to be based on two which were gliding off over my house to look for worms early this morning). Looong time since I last saw a Buzzard in the air by 7AM.

Then I've stuck on a highligher pen/coffee autumn bluethroat just for fun and comparison- one with cautious hidden feet and one with incautious chickeny feet.
 

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1 vote for the feet. Even though they are obviously the same size the left bird looks bigger/closer more in your face. with just a few blades of grass the second bird seems to start to fade in to the background.

Love them both by the way but the left one seems to add a bit of drama.
 
1 vote for the feet. Even though they are obviously the same size the left bird looks bigger/closer more in your face. with just a few blades of grass the second bird seems to start to fade in to the background.

Love them both by the way but the left one seems to add a bit of drama.

I'm glad if it brought out the difference a set of feet can make to the rest of the bird -let's see if we can lure out some masterclass advice on feet from others...

The main thing IMHO is to keep the level of detail on the feet in line with the rest of the bird- if the rest of the bird is done as a cheery sketch, the same should go for the feet- don't try and cram in a whole lot of claws, scales, joints, knuckles etc. unless you are going for that level of detail across the whole piece.
 
Yes Ed - I agree totally. It's all about making the drawing as a whole - the feet are different texturally and are complicated (or can be) in form - but so are bird's beaks and bills and we wouldn't go around sticking every woodsand up to its chin in mud (would we?) so we didn't have to draw the bill. I find them very hard to paint, personally (look at spizeatos' work for 'how to do it properly - and Andrew's stuff shows it brilliantly too) - but th more the feet are part of the bird (and painted as such) the more convincing they'll (and it) will be. IMHO.
A couple of my drawings (never meant to be works of art) to show how I think feet contribute to the sense of balance and 'rightness' of a bird - then a couple of paintings by a lad who shows a bit of promise . . .
 

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ahh that Peregrine- one of the very few paintings I have ever ever seen that shows the uppermost leg joint- i.e the joint where the bottom two leg sections (tarsus and feathered tibia/shank/drumstick) meet the femur/thigh and head back towards the pelvis.

Just occassionally you see a photo of harrier trailing its legs and you can see that joint exposed, but here's Eric E with it spot on in I guess the 1930s..

EDIT: here's one of those harriers showing off where it gets its reach from

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:C_aeruginosus.jpg
 
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I've just looked through one of my sketchbooks and realised just how often I neglect the feet! I'm going to tell myself it's because the feet are seldom visible and they are the last thing you tend to try sketching and by the time you do the subject has moved. Well, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!

Just to prove I do sometimes get to the feet...

Woody
 

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Another lunchtime clipping to flick into the foot bath, prompted by a leggy stint posted in the ID forums yesterday. Of course if you are blessed, you just draw what you see and you don't have to work it out like this...but the three basics I try and cling onto are:

- never ever change the length of a leg section to make it fit

- instead (in your mind or on the page), flex the leg at each joint until it fits

- above all, think about where the knee joint is; it's hidden but it holds the answer to the all important question of where and at what angle the leg enters the breast feathers....
 

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Another lunchtime clipping to flick into the foot bath, prompted by a leggy stint posted in the ID forums yesterday. Of course if you are blessed, you just draw what you see and you don't have to work it out like this...but the three basics I try and cling onto are:

- never ever change the length of a leg section to make it fit

- instead (in your mind or on the page), flex the leg at each joint until it fits

- above all, think about where the knee joint is; it's hidden but it holds the answer to the all important question of where and at what angle the leg enters the breast feathers....

Ah - this is one worth cutting out and keeping Ed - thank you!

I am certainly not an expert when it comes to drawing feet - one of the blessings of drawing waders is that most of the time you can't see 'em - but when you can, it never ceases to amaze me how big their feet are. I tend to make the elementary mistake of making mine too small, and I usually do a similar thing with hands on the rare occasions when I attempt to draw humans.

Here's a not particularly good photo I took last week that shows this (waders' feet that is, not me drawing humans).
 

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I tend to make the elementary mistake of making mine too small, and I usually do a similar thing with hands on the rare occasions when I attempt to draw humans.
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Interesting comment Dave. It occurred to me recently that having realised I draw wings too small on flight birds it was because I can't draw wings! At the same time, I often do feet too big because for some reason, I'm more confident with feet and overcompensating for the parts of the bird that I find even harder! It goes with the territory perhaps of paying more attention to birds on the ground for me as they are usually closer to observe without a scope and dodgy eyes, whereas in flight it's harder to get prolonged views of wing feathers etc with the naked eye. I wonder whether erring on the side of small is something a lot of us subconsciously do with a body part we'd rather not draw at all! ie. do it small in the hope the ''errors'' will not show significantly. (I make no comment on Nick's last painting ;))
 
Thanks Tim for recommending this thread.

One of my favorite parts on a bird are the legs especially when I am doing a sculpture. That's why I have gotten so frustrated with a Meadowlark that has been giving me so much trouble lately.
It is sitting on a power line and it's legs are at an awfully awkward angle that I can't seem to get right. The feet always look great, but the placement of where the legs meet the body has me going nutso.
 
Thanks Tim for recommending this thread.

One of my favorite parts on a bird are the legs especially when I am doing a sculpture. That's why I have gotten so frustrated with a Meadowlark that has been giving me so much trouble lately.
It is sitting on a power line and it's legs are at an awfully awkward angle that I can't seem to get right. The feet always look great, but the placement of where the legs meet the body has me going nutso.

Hello all- nice to see some traffic on here. Those comments on drawing feet small as a sort of defensive tactic are spot- on. Subconciously, you think that if you don't make to much of a statement with them, you might get way with it..

Dave B's of course quite right about true foot size- the toes on my little wader are probably about two thirds true length. I could pretend the last third is covered by mud or might have a little tinker with it.

Commiserations to Birdpotter on the sculpting challenge - the side-on view can look OK but then when you look from front or back..aieeee.

The number of times I have drilled leg holes in the base of a carving , then drilled another..then another until the drill holes start to merge into each other..then out with the filler..

So one killer question is how far apart the legs should be where they enter the body- do they join the body close together and angle round it, or do they hang off the side of the body, just inside the flank feathers.
 
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balance

Beth - thought I'd best reply on this 'anatomy' thread.
I'm not au fait with the specific problems you 3-D ers suffer regarding balancing birds, but I would have thought that to make a quick sketch of your model and then work out the balancing point as on the sketch sheet ought to help to find the right 'feel' for the bird.
The sketches show a very basic idea that if the mass of the bird can be simplified and a line drawn through the virtual centre - then the feet ought to be along that axis (although there are other issues which can get in the way of such a simple theory).
Comments anyone?
 

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