When I was a kid, I used to like to draw. I would draw cars, trees, boats, whatever.
Fast forward and now I like to take photos. A ton of photos. I usually take more than 100,000 photos a year. A typical day could be 500-2000 images depending on how many places and cool things and action I encounter.
A month or so ago I bought a couple of sketch books and some pencils, erasers, etc.
Thursday I sat down with a pad and pencil and stared at it for a while. Then I drew a box with a vertical line through it. And I scratched my head so to speak... What is that and why did I draw it? I didn't know. I still don't know, but it was a starting point. I figured out that was NOT what I wanted to draw. Usually my doodles are boxes, three dimensional distractions that are a waste of time but accomplish the goal.
Then from somewhere the idea of drawing a bird came to me. I decided to try to draw an osprey, and drew about 8 that first night, each roughly a quarter of the page I had to work with. Here are 3 from the first night.
Then on the second night I used most of a page and drew this single portrait. It's got some light and shadow...
Tonight (3/25/2017) I drew another osprey portrait but I didn't like the way it came out. It was too dark and there some issues with the proportions being a little bit askew.
So I drew a second image and here's what I came up with, it is from an image I took today of an osprey eating a fish. All these drawings are based on photographs I took at some point. I put the image up on my iPad and then drew...
Tonight's second drawing (above) is the first that has the tail and the repeating patterns in the feathers, and the first with talons. I drew it quickly and probably because I had done another image and given up on it, I was fast to call it done. Looking at it more I could work on the eye more and the left leg might need some adjusting. But part of this exercise is to go quick and make drawings and learn and move on.
I'm still playing with a few modes of doing the drawings. 2 days ago I started with the eyes and then added around that slowly. Today I tried starting with the tree branch and then added the eye and then more of an outline of the bird. In the future I want to try to do more of an outline of the entire bird/subject and then as I go fill in the details. That should help me get the scale and proportions better. But I also know from some past drawings that starting with small details and adding slowly to that can have a surprisingly good result because it is details added to details and the scale is considered for each small area vs. trying to get the scale correct all up front...
Hope you like the drawings, I had fun making them and plan to make more.
-Jon
0 comments:
Post a Comment