pigeon flight slo-mo

A Few Portraits

I'm working on the first lesson on how to draw birds. But in the meantime, here are some bird paintings that have coincided with some experiments in watercolor, using a couple of different brushes. Mechanical pencil on cold-pres (bumpy) paper, then about three layers of paint, light to dark obviously. Mostly burnt sienna, yellow ochre, prussian blue, as well as gray/diluted ink. Some judicious use of masking fluid. I touched them up in photoshop.

I'll take this opportunity to praise the work of a bird photographer named Mike Yip. He has a website called VancouverIslandBirds (and I believe a book by the same name) which has an enormous number of superb bird photographs and stories of birding in his area. He clearly is a great lover and student of wildlife, and a great amateur photographer too. I want his camera.

The first two paintings in the following series (the willet and the bloody goshawk) are directly based on his photos.

Falco Subbuteo

This is my Hobby [<-brilliant pun].

Introduction

Hello and welcome. This is going to be my blog about drawing and illustrating birds, a subject I've been working on for several years now. I have a lot of material ready, I just need to do some scanning and editing. I'll start with the basics of form, mass, and anatomy. Then I'll address how form follows function, some important poses and behaviors, and the mechanics of flight. Next will come surface details, feathers, patterns and colors. I may even take a few steps into habitats and environments, so we can see the birds in context. I will illustrate everything with diagrams as well as watercolor paintings, and I'll try to keep everything as clear and simple as possible. Along the way I will reference a number of other bird illustrators and authors, scientists and amateur photographers and birders. I will do some writing about birding in general, but this blog will primarily be about illustration. However my drawing method involves a lot of observation of natural phenomena, structural patterns and behavior, so I don't entirely separate illustration from biology. I expect these lessons to be applicable to other drawing subjects, and this blog is meant to be a companion piece to my broader-themed blog about the natural and built environment called A Green Language.