I love drawing birds with distinctive beaks. These guys have a longer lower bill because they skim the surface of the water to eat. They can also dive and fish with the best of them, but the skimming is really where it’s at with these guys. He has ruffled feathers because he’s been sitting on a windy cliff-top.
The Loggerhead Shrike, here perched upon the tip of a wing bone from a bat. tweet tweet.
Hey little penguin. I chose a random chunk of an old (un-successful) drawing and re-purposed for this penguin. It’s kind of funny how the arm looks like it might be reaching out to pet him (or grab him?) I like the facial expression. It makes me think it’s time to go back to the Cal Academy of Sciences again and watch the penguins in their tank.
The Killdeer. I don’t know why it has such a vicious name. It’s not such a big bird. I like the shadow in the background, though.
Is is nearly three years after I drew this bird that I am finally uploading it to the website. I could waste time chastising myself for my long absence and slow progress. But I had a baby. And then serious depression. And then that baby became a toddler and I felt like I would never have time to myself again. So I am carving out little chunks of time. And here is one: uploading a bird.
This post has less to do with the bird and more to do with my own state of mind, three years later. Ah well, so is life.
The common murre. As good a place as any to re-start the documentation of a much-loved and ignored project. Hello, little bird.
Stately bird on a pink background. I’m not sure if the roundness of his body translated with the ink. But I like the openness of the background.
I am pondering if I should roll out another length of rag paper and abuse it with watercolors to make backgrounds for more birds… BUT I have all this nice white cardstock that I rescued from the recycling bins at work (with the rebranding, we are changing all our paperstock, and huge boxes were up for being tossed. A bunch of us artist types grabbed the nice invites and divvied them up). So I really don’t need more paper!
Dive-bombing bird. I am pleased with the stripey pattern on the tail section, and the overall outline is nice, too. I am less sure about how it fit into this odd paper/background image choice. I was trying to use some of the more complicated chunks of torn paper… squares with big printed images on them are tough. Do you acknowledge the image and tie it in, treat it like a background element, or do you try incorporating it into the body of the bird, thereby partially hiding it from view? I have tried all three, with mixed success. I’m not sure about this one.
This drawing is a bit of an experiment. It’s the first time this year that I drew unfeathered chicks (rather than a juvenile or adult). It’s also the first time that I drew more than one bird in a composition. It seems like I’ve been drawing “portraits” of individual birds.
I was drawn to this image because the chicks form such a nice little celtic knot of naked bird-y pinkness. I love the way their necks are intertwined over one another in their sleep. Also, the outline is an almost perfect triangle (which, according to my art history learning, is the most stable of all compositions).
It also tickles me that these guys are toco toucans, the same bird as that obnoxious Toucan Sam in all the Froot Loops commercials. And yes, it is spelled “froot,” lest anyone get the notion that there is actual FRUIT contained in those tiny sugar bombs. So I’m very happy that these toco toucans look absolutely nothing like the Kellogs spokesbird. yay.
So, I was saying that color scares me. And this is the perfect example. I chose to draw a hummingbird – a RUBY-THROATED, no less. And what do I do? I chose a close up of a juvenile’s head. A juvenile who is too young to have developed that famous ruby throat. He is still a hum drum grey, with only a few tiny flashes of yellow-green to show off. But oh, those tiny flashes took me forever! I agonized on how to get that shiny shiny glow of those eight little feathers. Unfortunately, the scan doesn’t quite capture how successful this effort turned out. You’ll just have to come visit me (or my show, if these ever get shown anywhere?)
One thing that tickles me about this drawing: I did such a super close up on the hummingbird, that the drawing of just his head is far larger than the actual bird! I see these in my front yard all the time, and they are so tiny and quick. Zooom!
claire meyler 