Tag: Drawing Ducks

Ducks and a Danish

duck sketches

Sketching the ducks, cormorant, Canada geese and in-between black-headed gulls, some juveniles, some adults beginning to lose their black heads. We were surprised how few – if any – there were at the black-headed gull colony at St Aidan’s last week. They’d been so noisy in the spring and early summer. Now I guess they’ve dispersed with a hundred or more – perhaps St Aidan’s birds – turning up at Newmillerdam, where they can perch on fallen willows on the quieter bank of the lake and keep an eye out for hand-outs on the war memorial side.

coffe time

And yes, I might have drawn more of them if I hadn’t been sidetracked by a Danish cinnamon pastry at the Boathouse.

coot nest

These coots have raised a brood at the nest site I drew last year near in the corner by the outlet of the lake.

chimney stacks

Thanks to instant communication, I was able to message my photograph of the Danish pastry to the far end of the lake as a warning to Barbara that I’d got tied up on essential business, however I beat her and her brother back to the car park and had time to draw two of the chimney stacks of the Fox and Hounds, adding the colour later from a photograph.

Shelducks

I choose the ducks that appear to have settled down by the pool at Charlotte’s Ice Cream Parlour, but sleeping ducks are soon disturbed; preening ducks soon go on to the next stage in their routine; and all of them, as soon as I get my watercolours out, seem to remember that they’ve got urgent business in the duck shelter and they disappear out of sight altogether.

It’s such a pleasure attempting to draw them and, like my attempts at creating frames for a comic strip yesterday, I realise that all I need to do is keep at it, try my best and some of the character of each bird will come over in my drawing.

After dinosaurs, mallard drakes were one of my earliest inspirations for drawing natural history. They’re so handsome at this time of year and even a basic drawing soon appears mallard-like when you add the bottle green of the head, the brown of the breast and the yellow of the bill.

When Sir Peter Scott was a young school boy and wanted to paint nothing but ducks, his art teacher told him:

“Go away and paint a pudding, when you’ve learnt to paint a pudding, then you can move on to painting ducks.”

As so many of my sketchbooks feature drawings made in coffee shops and tea rooms, I think that I can say that I’ve now had adequate practise at painting puddings.

Bring on those ducks, I’m ready.