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Yellow-Headed Blackbird - Graphite on Paper
Copyright 2010, Nicole MacPherson
Yellow-Headed Blackbirds are impressive looking birds! They are lousy songsters though! But the males put on wonderful displays, easily compensating for any musical shortcomings. I've found them to be harder to photograph than the Red-Winged Blackbirds. Less common in general, and a bit more suspicious of humans. The Yellows are also more social, often foraging in groups.
This was my first attempt at a real background. I found it harder than I expected. Birds are fun to draw, grass and reeds are not!
As I've mentioned on this blog before, I don't use different kinds of pencils. But I think I might have to change that. Had to go over some parts a LOT to get them dark enough. This ended up warping the paper. It was even visible when scanned, and the paper underneath this one has a big, bird-shaped impression on it! Finished this guy up on the 21st, but he's been sitting beneath heavy stuff since that time, trying to get the paper to flatten!
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