Locked Down Again

 Well...

Here we go again. Let's hope this Lock Down is short and sharp, finished in the 5 days promised and we are all back to class on Thursday! Better safe than sorry, and we have managed to get in 3 class sessions this term.

Week 1: For those watching but not in classes, we have been focusing on birds, their anatomy, structure and detail. In our first session we looked at the skeletal form and each student was given photo handouts of many different types of bird skeletons and asked to create a well rendered observational drawing of between 1 and 5 of the images supplied. An actual chicken skull was also available for study and life drawing.

Chicken Skeleton Study

Chicken Skull Study

Week 2 saw us drilling down and intensively looking at bird feet. Many artists avoid bird feet, hiding them behind a leaf or in grass because they do not understand the structure. This session was aimed at investigating the different types of feet and observing how they differed from each other. Special attention was paid to size, configuration and nails/claws. Students were offered some 20 images to work from.

Bald Eagle Foot on handlers hand - study

In Week 3 we looked at bird heads, concentrating on different types of beaks and how the eye was positioned in the head. Again, 20 or so images were supplied. Note all images used in class except the skeleton images were from my personal library of photos.

Beaks Study sheet 1

Beaks study sheet 3. Note this guy is a personal friend and he comes and sits on my window sill every morning yelling at me and begging for a hand out.

All of the above drawings were done using graphite pencils, primarily F, 2B and 4B in a Windsor Newton A5 200gsm Visual Diary. Hints and tips were supplied by a variety of books I own, but most importantly John Muir Laws Guide to Drawing Birds. An excellent resource that I highly recommend. Visit his website for great information, books, instruction, videos and print outs: HERE

So, our next class was to be drawing the bird whole using a taxidermy model. Hopefully this will happen in the next week or so, but if you are looking to explore more in your bird investigation until then, I invite you to draw the following in your sketchbook. This is the wing and tail feathers of a Boobook Owl that sadly had a fatal encounter with a car.  This piece of roadkill was found out near Bathurst and collected by a licensed wildlife carer who allowed me to photograph it.