New medium

I’m pretty comfortable with Adobe Photoshop and am now very competent in InDesign, but I’m terrible at Illustrator. Which is too bad, because it’s a very powerful sketching tool.

I drew a sketch of a crow outside my window, then drew it freehand in Illustrator with the pencil tool. Minor tweaking only — this took about 5 minutes.

I hope to improve. I won’t do much digital work on Bird by Bird but this is a good skill to develop…

Crow in the Puddle

A few days off, folks. I didn’t do much sketching apart from a Western gull in Point Arena on Saturday, but here’s a crow from last week when we still had puddles everywhere.

The high temperatures and high winds have made the mud a memory… and this morning I heard my first oriole. Hope to spot him tomorrow morning to be able to sketch. If he’d cooperate and sit in the top of the almond tree, fast losing its blossom, that would be perfect.

Mourning Dove

Red-winged Blackbird

More birds in the puddle today…

Ferruginous Hawk

I was out getting some sodden and rotting straw on the garden when Numenius said “There’s a very light red-tail out here.” I went to fetch my binoculars. The bird flew. “That’s a rough-legged hawk,” I said, noticing the windows in the wings.

The bird returned to its perch. It’s not a rough-legged but a young ferruginous. I didn’t finish getting the straw on the garden and I didn’t sweep the house for my dear friends who are coming for lunch (or another friend who’s arriving from Massachusetts tomorrow, and who requested that we put salt on the bird’s tail till he gets here…).

Housework: oh well.

Horned Lark, Saturday at the Bypass

California Duck Days is a sort of orgy of people coming together, spreading out to see birds, getting wet, and finally regrouping at the Yolo Basin Wildlife Area Headquarters, bedraggled, tired, and hungry.

I took a small group out to Lake Solano, not on the bike. We saw several phainopeplas and had wonderful looks at a red-breasted sapsucker. I then took myself around the Wildlife Area before heading into town.

I found this horned lark on the road; sketched; went home and did an oil pastel version. It was raining…

Great Egret: Finally, Silverpoint

Storm=gray days, and we had one today. I decided to try silverpoint on Pastelbord (a wonderful surface). You can’t do this quickly: the first pass is almost uniform, so you have to work on getting the darks as dark as possible while leaving the lights untouched, or barely worked.

It’s a hypnotic process, filling in the alfalfa field. slow, steady. It’s not a sketch, though I did a few sketches in pencil beforehand…

Rufous Hummingbird

A huge storm is on the way. We’ve had a lot of rain today already, but winds are supposed to pick up tonight and be fearsome, taking out trees and power lines. We still have power (and thus water) but maybe not tomorrow.

Today we saw our first rufous hummingbird of the year, sipping from the feeder in the pouring rain. I set the scope up and perched on the couch in order to sketch. It kept coming back so I kept making more; guess this will work for Illustration Friday’s “Multiples.”

Hyperactive Black Phoebe

American Robins in Bath Mode

After yesterday’s rain there are plenty of birds taking baths in puddles, in particular one outside my window at work.

I tried to get a sense of the bustle and officiousness of these robins in a colored pencil sketch, above; it didn’t really get it. So I tried a portrait.

Carried on with watercolor and it’s getting closer… after their baths they sit and preen in a tree and chatter away, flicking their tails and feathers in unison…