Cormorant Sketching In Realtime

26 September 26

Cormorant Sketching In Realtime

Pica and I are starting to watch recorded sessions from the Wild Wonder Conference that we were unable to catch live. Yesterday we watched a workshop entitled “Argh, It Moved” given by Charlotte Belland, who is a professional animator and art school professor. She presented her primary technique for field sketching of animals, who tend to move when you are trying to sketch them. She summarizes this with the phrase “Observe — Flow — Details”. The first step is to observe the animal carefully, fixating on it for 7 or 10 seconds and trying to map its form to some other familiar object. The second step is to spend a minute or so sketching the animal without glancing back at it, emphasizing its movement flow lines. In the final step one looks at the animal again and begins drawing in the details. We practiced this technique in the class by looking at pairs of bird photos, the bird having moved in the second photo.

I decided I wanted to practice this technique in the field so this morning I went to the UC Davis Arboretum to see what water birds were on the lake there. There was a double-crested cormorant floating in the lake as there often is and I did a series of sketches of it in my nature journal. I am trying to figure out what the best mark-making tools are for me for this technique. After today’s session I think my approach will be to do the flow sketch with a light-valued colored pencil, and draw the details with a combination of more colored pencil, ink, and perhaps wash. My nature journal page from the day is at left.

The cormorant moved out of sight for a while, so I did my urban sketch for the day of a tree on the other side of the lake, as shown at right.