Battling the Page

No new drawing!  Not for lack of trying - I've actually got five here that have been started, but for some reason, none of them are putting the proper effort into getting themselves finished!  Sassy drawings...  More updates as the war progresses! 

Drawing - Nazca Booby

Nazca Booby - Graphite on Paper

Copyright 2009, Nicole MacPherson

The Nazca Booby features in many tourist photos taken in the Galapagos Islands.  It's a large, striking bird that doesn't fear humans, so is easily photographed by people with ordinary cameras.  It's an interesting bird, with "interesting" nesting methods - siblicide anybody?

This drawing was done a little different than normally for me.  I have never seen this bird, have never been to the Galapagos.  I also wanted to try a slightly looser drawing, without the necessity of drawing each feather barb!  My Baltimore Oriole put me behind schedule, and I wanted to catch up!  I found the photo at Morguefile.com- a photography site that allows the creation of derivative works.

Most stock photography sites do NOT allow derivative works (such as drawings) to be created from their photos.  Even the "creative commons" websites usually do not allow this, something I've always thought to be a rather interesting omission...

A lot of the feather detail was lost in the scanning of this picture - not sure if this is operator error, or if I need a new scanner!

Here is the original photo:

Drawing - Baltimore Oriole

Baltimore Oriole - Graphite on Paper

Copyright 2009, Nicole MacPherson

Baltimore Orioles are amazing birds!  After a looooooong winter, I can't wait til they arrive - if they arrive!  We had Orioles in 2004, then not again until 2008 and this year, always in the last half of May.  Sugar water, oranges and suet are their favorites, but we had one male using our peanut feeder one year - doing his best impression of a woodpecker!  Every year, I hope that a pair will stay put and nest in our area, but they never do.  Not that I blame them - the city is a tough place to raise children! 

This individual was sitting atop the feeder hanger, and had fluffed up against a spring chill. 

It seems like a funny thing to do, to draw such a colorful bird using shades of grey!

New drawing underway...

Any guesses?  I hope it's visible - my scanner isn't the greatest, and seems to leave out a fair bit of detail. 

Animated WIP - American Robin

This site lets you make animated gifs from your jpeg files. Thought I would try it with my WIP image files of the American Robin. A more interesting one would be from the stage before these - when I'm trying to get the profile right, that one would jump around a lot!  It takes me forever to get that one right, but making a gif from that would mean scanning the page every two or three minutes!  Maybe in the future! 

Drawing - American Robin

American Robin, Graphite on Paper

Copyright 2009, Nicole MacPherson

Robins aren't rare by any stretch of the imagination, so tend to be uninteresting to birders, except when they turn up out of season.  So we see them a lot in our travels, but I'm always keen for them!

Our tiny yard is located in an old section of the city, so has many big, old trees around.  The yards are small, so there aren't many open stretches of the sort that robins prefer.  Hence, not many robins.  This spring was different, a new pond setup convinced them to stop and visit. 

Drawing water was a new trick!  Actually, this bird was tricky to draw in general - he kept creeping down and to the right on the paper!  Tried my best to center him on the page, but didn't work too well!  Hence the slightly cut off right foot.  I hope he forgives me the indignity.