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Thursday, July 29, 2010

Sketch: Finches

   
While resting up from last weekend's excitement, I've been sketching birds at the feeder with my still-functional right hand.  It's a wildly unpredictable process; 9 out of 10 times, the bird moves or flies away before I even get a few marks down on paper.  So I end up erasing a lot of preliminary ovals and circles  -- the shapes that undergird most avian armatures -- before actually getting a likeness down.  Most of these little studies were scribbled in under 10 seconds, but they are invaluable as gesture drawing practice and as observations.

(These were all on one page of my large 11 x 14 inch sketchbook; but ended up being two pages due to being digitized via a 8.5 x 11 scanner.  Didn't feel like fiddling with the camera today.)

2 comments:

lady guerrilla painter said...

Hi Laura,
This post reminded me of something I posted on our Plein Air Journal a while back. Go this page http://judsonjournal.blogspot.com/2009_04_01_archive.html
and scroll down to "Sketching Birds From Life" (and click on the link to her blog, too). Great stuff...
P.S. Sorry you shot yourself in the hand!
Sarah Judson

Laura G. Young said...

Hello Sarah!

What a pleasant surprise to see you here; thanks so much for the link. :) :) My thumb's doing much better now, but for the past couple of weeks my bad knees have been providing a bit of a challenge, instead. Ah, well.

Hope everyone's well up in Laporte,

--L