Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
When I was drawing them in action from a distance yesterday the female pheasants seemed fairly plain – light tan with streaks – but drawing in close up from a photograph I took yesterday with a telephoto lens there’s lots of complexity in the pattern of the plumage.
Five female pheasants alternated from pecking around the feeders for spilt sunflower hearts and crumbs from the fat balls to drinking at the pond (and one unwisely tried to run across the surface of the water!) then going down to the veg beds to rest for a while.
One pheasant, feeding on its own at that time, suddenly burst into a ‘mad half hour’ routine, as my mum used to describe similar behaviour in a cat; darting around and flouncing its feathers as if it was being threatened by some invisible enemy. This lasted less than a minute, not a full half hour.
Canada geese at Newmillerdam this morning.
More bird anatomy studies from photographs in the Dorling Kindersley Eyewitness Guides Bird and Skeleton.
The Canada geese are from a photograph in The Encyclopedia of Birds by Perrins and Middleton.
This is from an illustration in the 1969 AA Reader’s Digest Book of British Birds, artist unknown: eight artists worked on the project but illustrations aren’t credited individually.
I’ve drawn a sketch which is a combination of some of the poses of the Canada geese that I photographed last week.
Our next assignment in the Domestika course, Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate with Román GarcÃa Mora is to roughly drawn in the underlying bones. For this I referred to a photograph of a goose skeleton that I’d found on the internet.
Next the main muscles. If goose has its wings folded the cover the top leg muscles and the body muscles such as the large breast muscles, the Pectoralis. I’ll try this exercise with a four-footed animal where all that will be more visible.
But at least if I’m called up to carve a roast goose this Christmas I’ll have a vague idea about what’s going on.
Canada goose feet, drawn on the iPad Pro in Procreate.
I’ve just started a Domestika course, Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate
and illustrator and 3D modeler Román GarcÃa Mora has asked us to choose an animal or bird and put together a reference sheet about it. As we were heading for the Thornes Park duck pond yesterday I decided to go for Canada geese, a bird that I can guarantee being able to find if I need to go back for further reference.
Photographic reference is fine but Román believes that the way to understand your subject is to draw it yourself, preferably from life in its natural habitat. Failing that the zoo or a natural history museum gives an opportunity to learn more.
I’d be surprised to find a stuffed Canada goose in any of our local museums but I do have a Victorian stuffed bird that I can use for the purposes of the tasks we’ve been set in this exercise so I’ve drawn this juvenile great-crested grebe.
The unfortunate grebe was shot on Bretton Park Lake at a time when the species was all but extinct in the area because its plumage was valued as ‘grebe fur’ in the fashions of that time. Unfortunately I don’t have an exact date.
I’m following Román’s technique for sketching in Procreate, working on a light grey background and starting with what he calls a ‘stain’, a rough tonal outline of the bird. I’ve downloaded the Procreate brushes that he used in the online demonstration and used them as you might use chalks, tonal washed and pencil.
Domestika online art courses
Black-headed gull, moorhen, mallard and Canada goose at Thornes Park duck pond this morning.
After recent heavy rain Newmillerdam is cloudy and khaki. A great-crested grebe pops up just yards from my table at the water’s edge at the Boathouse Cafe with a small silvery fish in its bill.
Down by the outlet a heron is watching, waiting and stalking its prey, so intent on fishing that it allows me to rest my iPhone on the railings just 10 yards away from it to take this photograph.
Curlews and tree sparrows at the Northumberland Wildlife Trust’s Hauxley nature reserve last week.
And some grazing teal from our return journey via RSPB Saltholme reserve.