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| Acorn Woodpecker; Meladerpes formicidorkus |
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| Acorn Woodpecker; Melanerpes formicivorus |
So I'm playing around with planning a kids Nature Club, ideally to be offered at the Library. It's something that I am actually pretty excited about and it's been fairly motivating for me. A loose outline of the idea would be to get the kids each a nature journal, talk to them about different ways that they can experience the wilderness and all the different media and modes that they can use to express what they've encountered and how they've felt with subsequent meetings allowing them to share what they've seen and made while giving interpretive guidance on narrower subjects such as birds, geology, trees and forests, etc.. The idea would be to encourage them towards a creative interest in the wilderness and to subtly instill a deep wonder in and care for the natural world and the desire to become better stewards of such an integral part of our community.
In this spirit, I thought it might be a good idea to teach myself to draw in a more realistic mode than my usual cartoon mess so that I could talk at least somewhat convincingly about the ways in which one can improve one's skills from even abysmal beginnings. Above you will have seen my first attempt, knocked out in a few minutes between extemporizing to visitors at E.T. about the beauty of the Lake. I picked an Acorn Woodpecker for its impeccably well-defined lines, thinking this would make it simpler. It did, and at least I was able to put forth something that was at least identifiable as the species it was intended to depict. I thought I'd put it out here as kind of a marker of my first attempt and as I practice and hopefully improve, I can loosely document my progress and have some tips I can share with kids. So check back in... 7 years... maybe... and you should see some fairly passable bird sketches going on.
That little Woodpecker I drew just looked a little sad and uncomfortable though, so I figured I would research a bit of its Life History in order to practice evoking a little of the bird's natural personality in my "art". Combining this with my own personal observations when I took the above picture I came up with something that I think makes rudimentary steps, at least, towards portraying the Acorn Woodpecker's relationship to the world around it including it's unfailing sense of style and personal struggles with a social drinking habit slowly creeping into early stage alcoholism. Nature really can be unforgiving at times.
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| Acorn Woodpecker; Smoothanerpas formicivelourus |
