Category: Birds

Alternative Lighting

alternative lighting on goose sketch

The next step on my Procreate animal illustration course is to take one of my thumbnail sketches and try it with three different lighting set-ups. I’ve gone for the light coming from the left, the right and from below (as if the goose had been caught in the beam from car headlights).

The one I like best is the light from above left and slightly behind, with a glint of reflected light from the bottom right.

angry goose sketch

Then it’s on to a rough drawing, not too detailed, but indicating the different areas of plumage.

Secondary Feather

Feather that I picked up by the track at St Aidan’s yesterday and I think that it’s a secondary from the right wing of a goose. A large flock of pink-footed geese went over, touching down at the Astley Lake end of the reserve.

Canada Geese in Flight

geese in flight sketches

On Román García Mora’s  Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate course I’ve gone back to a ‘task’ in an earlier unit, ‘Sketching in Front of the TV’. On YouTube I’ve found a National Geographic video of Canada geese taking off and drawn them on freeze-frame.

Having drawn them so much from life with wings folded it’s interesting to see what happens when the wings open up.

Sketchbook to Procreate

Starting off in Procreate

Rather than re-draw the Canada goose from my sketchbook, today I went to Procreate’s ‘Action’ menu and chose ‘Take a photo’ and used the rear camera of the iPad. I scaled up the photo to get the drawing I was after to fill the canvas.

goose drawing in Procreate

Now that I’m more familiar with the process of putting together a drawing, following Román García Mora’s suggestions for an ‘illuminated drawing’, the next stage is to get more of the natural variation of watercolour washes into the illustration.

Procreate: Naturalist Illustration

goose sketch
‘Pencil’ sketch, drawn on Procreate using an Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro using Román’s ‘Graffito’ (‘graffiti’) brush.

Wet weather even for the ducks and geese this morning so I’m trying the process of drawing an animal in Procreate on an iPad Pro as suggested by Román García Mora in his Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate course on Domēstika.

His favourite style is what he calls ‘illuminated drawing’ in the tradition of 18th and 19th century natural history illustration where a line drawing of the animal was printed and the colour added by hand in watercolour, so you get the definition of an ink drawing and the luminosity of watercolour.

Drawing on a new layer in Procreat with Román’s ‘Entinado’ brush, using the pencil sketch as a guide. ‘Entinado’ means ‘stubborn’, perhaps referring to the regular quality of the line.
line drawing of goose
Line drawing.
Shadow layer (greyish light blue) and colour added with four of Román’s Procreate brushes.

Geese Preening

sketchbook page geese preening

10.05 a.m.: I’m counting about 85 Canada geese this morning but a passing dog walker tells me that for two days last week he thought that they’d deserted, there were none on the lake.

Two passers by comment on the single drake mandarin that is looking immaculate but sadly hasn’t yet attracted a mate. I’m here for the geese but if he swims over towards me I won’t be able to resist drawing him.

Canada Geese, Thornes Park

Canada geese sketches

11 am: All the geese leave the pond and a flock of about 50 graze on the grassy slope.

Canada geese sketches

After two hours I’d almost finished this spread in my sketchbook but the last Canada goose was drawn back home from a photograph on the big screen of the iMac. I’m pleased that it looks equally as messy – let me rephrase that ‘equally as spontaneous’ – as the sketches done on location, sitting by the outlet of the Thornes Park Fish Pond, sometimes under an umbrella as fine rain fell.

Pheasant

pheasant

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.

Pheasants at the Feeders

pheasant sketches

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.