Botanicals And A Friend

Day 251: Emboldened by my modest success at drawing recognizable bird species, I have been working on botanicals most recently, trying to be as scientifically accurate as coloured pencils will allow. I've also done a few with graphite pencil, and while I feel that the medium allows me to capture more detail, the temptation to add colour is strong. That said, it's not always about science. The gooseberries (center left) were a bit of whimsy, sketched while sitting in a lawn chair in the Berry Pen. The California poppy (top right) is even more whimsical, and my first real attempt at using watercolours instead of watercolour pencils. I resisted the impulse to outline the plant in ink, a break from my usual style. Top left, you see Buckhorn (Plantago lanceolata), a weed everyone recognizes but can't name. Like the Columbine ("Black Barlow," lower left) and the Honeysuckle (Lonicera), it was a specimen plucked from my yard. And then of course we have Stemonitis middle right. It is a slime mold...not a plant, not an animal, not a fungus, so technically not belonging in this collection at all, but it was the very first Stemonitis I've found and therefore merited a degree of artistic immortality. I mean, what's not to like about slime molds?

Porch Parrot Head Study

Day 201: As I said to a friend just a few minutes ago, "Ego is a thing." I'm pretty proud of this one, but then, Porch Parrots (Evening Grosbeaks) are some of my favourite people. I did the sketch a few days ago using coloured pencil. I wasn't exactly happy with the way the pencil laid down on the lightly textured paper and was bemoaning the fact that I didn't own a blending stump (tortillon). I could have made one, I suppose, but I didn't want to risk messing up my work with a homemade stump. Then, in the process of looking for something else entirely in my arts cupboard, I found one. I think I'd put it away without any idea of how it was used. I did a test patch on scrap paper, liked the effect, and then took the leap to apply it to my Parrot. It substantially reduced the obvious accumulation of pencil on the "peaks" of the paper and also helped shade the colours. In playing around, I learned that a more rapid stroke warms the wax in the pencil and blends more smoothly, but a slower stroke allows for blending without entirely destroying fine lines. I still haven't settled on a medium for bird portraits, but I am leaning rather heavily toward coloured pencils, perhaps with a wash created with watercolour pencils (a different breed of cat) as an underlay or even as a glaze.

I Made Another Bird!

Day 199: I hope my readers will indulge me in these breaks from my customary subject matter. Believe me, drawing takes up only a very small portion of my pandemic routine, and most of my day is filled currently with spinning, weaving, quilting and (weather permitting) gardening. That said, I am trying to do at least one sketch per day as I try to find my style. The White-Crowned Sparrow shown above was first done in pencil, then inked before being coloured in with Prismacolor pencils. It was an experiment to see whether I preferrred the pencils to watercolours, and now I can't decide. Each medium has its advantages and disadvantages. I find I have more control over where the colour goes with pencils, but I prefer the way watercolours blend. Of course, watercolours sometimes blend when you don't mean them to, so that can also be a disadvantage to a novice watercolourist like me. Pencils, on the other hand, tend to accumulate more heavily on any textural bumps in the paper, but I understand this issue can be reduced by using a "blending stump." I don't happen to have one handy, but YouTube is full of videos on how to make your own. For this illustration, I used the basic sketching instructions (circles, ovals and lines) in "Laws Guide to Drawing Birds" and changed it up a bit to individualize the "racing-stripe" sparrow by altering the position of the legs and feet and adding a branch.

How To Draw A Bird

Day 198: A month ago, I was telling an artistic friend that I couldn't draw a cardboard box well enough to make it recognizable, and it was true. She encouraged me to keep trying, pointed me toward another artist whose explanation of perspective was very helpful (at least it taught me to draw the cardboard box so that it didn't look like someone had sat rather heavily on it) and, bolstered by that small success, I invested in a couple of cheap sketchbooks. For the last week or so, I've been drawing something every day. Birds have been a recurring theme, although they haven't been my only subjects. Another friend suggested that I buy John Muir Laws' "Guide to Drawing Birds." I did, and here you see the results of the first lesson. Laws' system was for a pencil sketch, but once I had inked in my "wobbler," I decided he needed some colour. Since I hadn't illustrated facial markings, I turned him into a Yellow Warbler. The pencil and ink drawings at the top of this image show the various stages of my work, first creating a basic bird shape with a few lines, an oval and a circle, into which I "carved" the arcs of neck and throat. Then I added detail to the body, face, wing and tail to show the major feather groups, following that with drawing individual feathers. In the penultimate phase, I applied ink with a fine-point Sharpie. Then, not having a "wobbler" to pose for me, I sat at the kitchen table with Roger Tory Peterson in hand as a guide to colour. For a first attempt at drawing a realistic bird, I don't think I did half bad.

"Measure Twice, Cut Once"

Day 189: Inspired by a friend's artistic endeavours, I decided to give sketching another go. As I may have mentioned, the House of Chirp has new tenants. They've been moving furniture in for the last week or so, and as all of us who have moved around a lot know, sometimes the couch won't fit through the door without some serious finagling. We don't take the couch back to the store; that would be silly. We fiddle with standing it on end, turning it around the other way, maybe even taking the legs off until we can maneuver it into the house. Nor are Tree Swallows likely to discard their selection, and if a twig or feather won't fit through the hole, they try this angle and that until it goes in. Now it must be said that I had intended to make this drawing more cartoonish to suit the caption, "Measure twice, cut once...right," but as I was standing at the kitchen window with the sketchbook held up in one hand and my pencil in the other, watching the antics of the new renters, the drawing took on a style independent of what I had in mind. Once the details had resolved themselves, I sat at the kitchen table to ink and colour it. A second effort made later in the day, drawn entirely from my imagination, did not work out as well. I will not make any claims of artistic talent, but at least my ability to draw a recognizable object is improving.

Field ID Fail

Day 169: When I'm tutoring people in how to do "field-guide" photography, I often use birds as an example. The same method can be applied to Meadow Rovers who are trying to educate Park visitors with respect to being able to identify those little LBJs (Little Brown Jobs) they always ask about. This is the second of a series of illustrations I'll be using in a Rover training session this June.

When observing any species of bird or plant or anything else, it is important to capture as much information as possible, whether by eye or with a camera. A bird viewed head-on supplies very little in the way of distinguishing features. You might be able to see an eye ring or breast markings, but that's often insufficient to make a solid ID. Were there bars on the wings? Was the body colouration uniform? What did the silhouette look like? Was it short and squat, or did it have a sleek outline? What shape was the beak? The famous "Angry Bluebird" is certainly a cute photo, but as far as being helpful in making an ID, it is a classic fail. A square-on side view of a bird is much more informative! Likewise, wildflower IDs often require being able to observe the leaf as well as the flower. If you can't get both in one shot, take two! That way, the ranger at the information desk will be much more likely to be able to help you.

Botanical Art

Day 97: My talent for art is feeble at best, although I'm learning how to handle coloured pencils thanks to a Christmas gift of Johanna Basford's "Enchanted Forest" colouring book. As I've experimented with shading and blending, it has occurred to me that any naturalist worth the name should at least dabble at illustrating. Here you see my first effort, catkins plucked from Harry Lauder, the contorted filbert in my yard. I made a faint outline of my subject with a standard lead pencil and then began applying colour. Unfortunately, I failed to center the drawing on the page (laziness on my part...I should have erased it and started over), and I find the colour saturation to be lacking (best I could manage with these pencils), but as a first attempt, I'm not too disappointed.

Mussie

Day 207: She was Clark to my Lewis, Watson to my Holmes. She was a full harness of Huskies pulling Robert Service through the savage Yukon night. We climbed Mt. Everest together, journeyed to the center of the Earth with Jules Verne and sailed to Polynesia with Thor Heyerdahl, sought the poles alternately with Scott or Christopher Robin as our expedition leader. No matter where the adventure might take us, I had only to suggest it and Mussie was by my side, stepping into her role.

A highly imaginative child, my forays into terra incognita nearly always occurred in some section of unmapped forest near my home. In those days, parents didn't worry about their children's safety as much as they do now. I'd already proved my woodsmanship at age 6 when my mother got us lost on a trailless ramble. As the sun sunk low in the sky and I kept insisting, "Mama, I can get us out," she gave in and let me lead. I brought us straight to the road with the unerring sense of direction which still stands me in good stead. Turning me loose with a lunch, a pocketknife and the injunction to be home for dinner, my mom helped set me on the path toward the outdoor lifestyle which is now my signature, and Mussie was often my only companion.

I've done a lot of post-processing to restore this sketch. The paper has long since gone to a yellowed grey. It is arguably the best of any of my artistic attempts, and certainly one done with a great love for my subject. I was 11 when I drew it, Mussie posing on my bed, and surely anxious to discover where we'd be off to in the morning.