Drawing Birds - A Few Questions? (1 Viewer)

Hi Everyone
when drawing birds, how do you go about drawing something that is out of focus?
Like if anyone is a member of the WWT, the picture on the cover is a close up of a Kingfisher in the water - the bird is in focus, but a lot of the 'splash' is not. Can you only really create this with paint (or is that even harder?)

Also - i am finding water itself hard to do - any tips?

Getting a blurred effect is something that I rarely do, probably because when I'm painting, there is some sort of focus on all the main elements, and what isn't important to the picture is just left a little less detailed and the brain blurs it itself. (If that makes sense!) One situation where I suppose I seek to paint in a blurred way is if I'm painting something in a heat haze. One way of doing this is painting wet in wet, another is to paint white gouache all over and then paint on that with watercolour. Avoid drawing in pencil as this creates hard lines that don't really go well with blurriness.

As for water, it is very hard indeed at times, look for things that tell the brain that it's water it's looking at, ie reflections, ripples, convincing water can be done just by painting an object and its reflection onto a blank piece of paper. Again, avoid drawing water, just paint it in, and don't overdo it!

Hope that helps, I'm sure everyone else has their own tips to add aswell, just experiment with a few techniques and keep the ones that work for you.

Thanks Nick

that helps a lot, I do prefer drawing as it is easier (in my opinion), and you can take a pencil and paper anywhere!

Zac

Zac Hinchcliffe said:

Thanks Nick

that helps a lot, I do prefer drawing as it is easier (in my opinion), and you can take a pencil and paper anywhere!

Zac

Click to expand...

Drawing's great for most things (and I'm guilty of not following my own advice as I'll often draw in water anyway), but some things don't really need to be drawn, just experiment, as I said and you'll find your own way - then you'll be telling us all how to paint water!

Quick question about field sketches
I was out today, trying to draw a mute swan, but wenever I attempted an angle the bird had moved so I only got a second to study it, how do you go about that, do you just get the general jizz of the bird with a few distinguishing features?

Zac

When the bird moves, start a new sketch, and go back to the old one when the bird is back in that position. Filling up a page with parts of birds is a lot better than one sketch that is badly done. Also you'll find that when you come to have a go at a sketch of the whole bird, it'll fall into place a lot easier. As you get more used to sketching and knowing what to look for you'll find it gets easier to do the bird in one go. (Usually!)

Thanks Nick

Ive noticed that actually on people field sketches - there is a bit of a squiggle that someone would have started and then moved on!

I just thought this was a squiggle

listen to this man he knows what he's talking about. top advice!:t: