Sunday, January 24, 2010

Day 21 - Birds

For day 21 I decided to try to sketch the birds that come to my feeder. One thing I realized pretty quickly is that the birds don't stay still for more than a second or two. So sketching them required studying the repeated movements and then trying to get them down on paper.  It was quite a challenge!


bird sketches
graphite and watercolor
copyright 2010 Stacy L. Rowan

The dark gray and white birds are juncos. There were several flitting around taking turns at the feeder.

The brown and red bird, to the best of my knowledge, is a house finch. It flew in and out pretty quickly. It was gone so quick that I only really noticed the red on its head. I looked it up in a bird book later and followed the coloring I found there.

All sketches were done with mechanical pencil. The watercolor was added later. 

4 comments:

Jennifer Rose said...

nice sketches :) it can be so hard trying to capture birds on paper unless they are being held.

M J Muir said...

It's nice to see you using a little colour this week. I am imagining those little birds flitting about making it impossible to do any deatailed sketches. These are sweet impressions.

Anonymous said...

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Thanks

Stacy said...

Jennifer, that's what I was missing! Someone to go out and hold them still for me! It sure would have made the task easier. ;)

MJ, yes these sketches are more of an impression of the birds. That's a good way to put it. I would have liked for them to be more detailed or realistic, but that's going to take more practice. Luckily I have a lot of days left in my project. :) And I imagine I'll do more watercolor sketching once the color starts coming back to this part of the world in the spring. That's part of my plan anyway.

Thank you Anonymous. I'm glad you like what I am sharing.