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JTMB's Bird Art (1 Viewer)

Spotted Sandpiper

These sketches (first three in ink, last one in graphite) were done from a video I shot at the natural area which I bird frequently. So they're not really done from life, but it seemed like a good way for someone new to life drawing birds to build up experience. I put the video on continuous loop and sketched from that.

Spotted Sandpipers are common summer residents and breeders in my local area, and relatively easy to find and observe. So next year when I have my first full summer drawing birds from life, they'll be one of my target species for a lot of practice. In non-breeding plumage (here) they have lost the large spots on the chest and belly that give the species its name.

I'm finding that bills (and feet) are my biggest challenges to get 'right' at present. That was true with these. The large eye ring was hard to get to feel at all natural, maybe partly because I was using ink...?

Critiques and advice welcome as always!

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definitely on an upward curve- I could see straight away in thumbnail that the Spotted Sand had an extra rightness about it..
 
John enjoyed your college story...and that last piper is really nice, can see where you will be soon, some real grace there.
 
I'm finding that bills (and feet) are my biggest challenges to get 'right' at present.

Observation is the key to getting both of those "right", but knowing the anatomy helps. John Busby's book "Drawing Birds" has a good section on that, and your local natural history museum may well have bird skeletons on display which you should find useful. After that it comes down to practice! Drawings from dead specimens are really useful too, as you've already discovered.

Keep drawing. You're progressing well - much faster than I ever did!
 
Thank you Ed, Colleen and Jackie - very much!

Jackie - I have Busby's book and have gone through it twice, but it is the type of wonderful book that I will have to read and apply many more times until I really 'get it'. Given how late in life I've started art, it's very motivating to hear someone at your level say I'm progressing quickly (Ed and Colleen - thank you folks as well!). Maybe I will have enough time left on earth to get beyond the early stages. :-O

I had an art teacher in junior high school tell me I had no art talent, so I pursued other things and never even attempted art until two years ago - when I took a nature journaling class for birding, thinking it would interesting even though I 'knew' I couldn't draw. All those years wasted...sigh! One benefit, I think, of starting as a mature adult (ok, well, an adult chronologically anyway!) is that I do know how to study and focus, and I had a career that required organization and discipline. Those things applied to art, coupled with a real love for the subject matter, haved helped the learning curve I think.
 
I had an art teacher in junior high school tell me I had no art talent.

Aaargh! It's so frustrating how many art teachers have put people off the subject. I guarantee that in every beginners' class I teach, at least one person will make a similar comment to yours. I'm sure there are good art teachers all over the world, but there also seems to be a proliferation of discouragers.

Congratulations on overcoming them.
 
Young - old, it doesn't really make any difference. If you are having fun with your art, keep at it. You are already progressing marvelously. I'm still trying to paint decent bird paintings and I've been at it seriously for about 17 years (since retirement). And by the way, I've got you beat--I'm 72--today!
 
Western Tanager Sketches - from video

Thanks Sid and Jackie.

Jackie - yes, I've heard deja vu stories like mine from quite a few people. I read somewhere that it's an interesting dichotomy relative to music. No one hands a violin to an untrained teenager and when they can't play at a competent level deems them to have no musical talent. Yet it seems to be that some have the attitude that if that same teenager can't produce a 'good' drawing or painting they have 'no talent for art'. Strange.

Here are yesterday's sketches which are not technically completely from life, but close enough that I'm counting them as such while I'm still at the beginning stages of learning how to do this. They were done from a video I shot at the natural area where I frequently bird. What I have been doing with the videos is to put them on a continuous loop and then sketch during the video. This is like doing it from life in that the birds are in normal motion and activities, but it allows you to get several tries on a given pose when it comes around again. I'm hoping this will help shorten my learning curve on drawing birds from life.

These two pages are a Western Tanager adult female. These birds have been migrating through our area for the last couple weeks, heading south for the upcoming winter. I lucked into the video opportunity. I pulled into a golf course parking lot that borders on the natural area where I bird and sketch - the parking lot overlooks a slough which usually has some birds on it. In the riparian vegetation right by the car, I saw movement and several Western Tanagers were working the trees. So as not to scare the birds, I shot the video while hanging out of the car, rather to get outside completely.

The sketches are done in Pigma Micron ink, then watercolor washes added. A couple of these you'll notice don't include the wing bars - on those I was just worried about getting the shape and head features correct.

As always, critiques are welcome.

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Excellent!
Once again I commend you for your sterling efforts, John. I like to see the dedication to your art you've described with the spotted sands, like setting yourself standards with particular species - that's something I do, but I'm not improving as fast as this!
Very nice efforts with the tanagers, too. It's obvious you've some skill with watercolours as thse look very controlled. Video seems a great idea, especially when the winds howling and it's freezing outdoors.
Let's see where you are in 12 months!

Russ
 
Thanks very much for the encouragement Adam, Russ, Arthur and Colleen! I am having a blast and really think this is going to be a major part of the rest of my life. :t:
 
Gull (mostly Ring-billed) Sketches

Here are this morning's sketching efforts. I went to a nearby state park that borders on a large lake to see if I could find any gulls (usually we get the most gulls on inland waters in the winter, not in summer or fall) and found a group of about twenty. They were fairly used to people, so I set up the camp stool pretty close to them and started sketching. I had only done gulls once before, so this is early in the learning curve. They certainly are much more cooperative subjects than the other families of birds I've tried so far.

These are in a 14x11" sketchbook using Pigma Micron pens.

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Nice observational work John.
Don't know if it's just me but I find sketching with pens very hard - a good quality B-3B grade pencil is much better as it gives you a great tonal range depending on how hard you're pressing and gives the ability to lightly shade areas to give your subjects form - something ink doesn't do. Again, maybe it's just me!
 
Hi Adam,

Thanks for looking and for the advice! I agree with you and will move to pencils more as I move up the learning curve. I'm still at the stage where I have to guard against trying to be too perfect as I go along, and so a non-erasble medium takes that temptation away. Busby mentioned doing this in his book and at first I thought, nah, not something I would do, but then decided to give it a whirl.

I've had two figure drawings classes, the first with only charcoal (on large newsprint) and the second with soft pastels when we were allowed to use color. It was an eye opener how much subtlety is possible just with charcoal.
 
Love the gulls .
I agree with Adam . Pencils allow you to draw freely. No rubbing out though, a lighter line and the shape you want will emerge. If that makes sense John.
 
You're making huge leaps now John. I'd add my voice to the pencil chorus, I think because it's possible to make a mark with a pencil yusing hardly any pressure and that helps towards free movement.

Mike
 
I am having a blast and really think this is going to be a major part of the rest of my life. :t:

Can't beat that John! And I think it shows as well. That may be why you're progressing so quickly.

As far as the pencil or pen choice I understand both arguments but my personal experience is that the pen is best. It forces you to be bold and decisive and you actually can vary the line weight through pressure more than you might at first think. But the important thing I think is that you just can't think about erasing because you know you can't. So you don't fiddle around, which is such a danger when you start.

Sometimes it's just good to go back and forth between media too. Each time you do you learn a little about both your old and your new media.

Either way it's a pleasure to see these develop.
 
Pencil Sketches - Crow, Junco and Hummer

Thanks Arthur, Mike and Ken. So I took the advice and did a couple sketches in pencil. I'll continue to vary between pencil, pen and (sometimes) watercolor washes for the sketches I think but the pencil really did feel more comfortable due to my experience from figure drawing classes.

The first two here are sketches from life, using the subjects in our outdoor aviary. No, we don't actually have an aviary, but our garden and feeding stations attract enough birds that it sometimes feels that way. Three years ago we took out almost all of the lawn in our yard and put in a 'woodland garden' type of landscaping, relying heavily on bird-friendly native plants. We also put in a small recirculating stream and a couple other birdbaths that I keep in good shape during the year. The results have been amazing. Now that the landscaping has grown and matured a bit, there is so much more cover in the yard for the birds that more of them feel comfortable 'hanging around' despite the occasional accipiter or - much to my dismay - neighbors' cats that come around to try to nab a bird.

The American Crow was sketched from my kitchen nook table, which has a 180 degree view of the yard (yes, sketching from life indoors feels a bit like cheating; no I don't feel guilty about it - :-O). The Dark-eyed Junco will be a more frequent subject as winter comes on, as they are the most regular and plentiful of our winter resident birds, with the exception of Pine Siskins if it is a good year for that nomadic species. There is too much contrast on the crow - he flew before I finished and I decided to leave it as it. The junco's tail got cut off. The juncos often, as in this one's case, seem very fluffed up, like little cotton puffs pecking at seed, but sometimes they are more sleek. It was raining when this was drawn, which may have been why.

The final drawing is in Polychromos colored pencils in a Moleskine sketchbook (about 5x8 inches), from a photo I took of a territorial male Anna's Hummingbird that staked out a territory near where I worked a few years back. These guys are interesting in that they winter over in the Puget Sound area. They're actually a non-migratory species, and have slowly expanded their range northward, primarily - according to our ornithologists - because of increased availability of winter-blooming non-native plants that have been added by people in the area, and the fact that people now leave hummer feeders out year-round when they see these birds in the winter. They are tough little birds which tend to dominate the other primary species we have here - Rufous Hummingbirds. Our house is higher in elevation than the lowlands where they are established so we have not yet had one winter over near us - but one is currently visiting the yard every day, so this winter may be the first.

Sorry for the long-windedness...!

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