Hawk'n Scribble Cheeseburger

"Red-shouldered Hawk"

 

It's frustratingly difficult to capture the expression on the hawk's face but I feel like the drawing came out good in its own way.  Maybe like a shot of a split-second after the photo where he realized he was being watched.  The beak shape feels impossible to get right as well and the wing feathers I'm not sure I even understand but it's fun to try.

"Mountain Chickadee"

This was just a quick, loose one I did with the Nature Journal Club but I think the freer hand captured a little more of the personality if also an inaccurate beak size...

Whoopsy-doodle!

 

"A Reasonable Falc-simile"

 

""Marvel" at My Modest "Improvements""

The Sketch-ed of the Earth

"Kestrel Haunted by Lack of Skill With Perspective"

 

"Worried Western Bluebird-- Amorphous"

 

Made an honest attempt to draw this Cooper's Hawk on break at work and, at first, miserably failed as you can see at right.  I started again, just to try to get the eye right and the rest of it came out decent.  So there's a lesson there about stick-to-itive-ness I think.  Anyway, I took it to heart and completed the drawing and coloring of the Cooper's Hawk and, why not, his misshapen compadre.

 

  

Then I had an idea for a sweet 80's revival "buddy cop" TV show.

He's Cooper, a wisecracking veteran P.I. with a drinking problem and an unspecifiedly haunting past.

And he's Baron Von Dummenvogel, a German playboy, former billionaire using the last of his inheritance to fund a failing detective agency in hopes of restoring his family's honor.

  

Together, they are:

 

Twofer Pen-draggin'

"Wren with Yellow Magpie Beak"

"Artist Terrible at Backgrounds"

I like drawing but drawing doesn't like me.

So this is a Green-tailed Towhee I saw last year at Cove East.

And my drawing doesn't exactly capture what I saw.  I mean that guy didn't have nearly as many visible foundation lines.

But I humbly submit that my Towhee looks just a little like Samuel Beckett.

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Maybe I should stick to drawing simpler stuff.  Like rocks.

Or maybe not.  The one on the right looks like a tasty potato.

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On the plus-side, I'm pretty close to ready to go with the Nature Journal Club at the Library.  I hope to inspire them towards exploring the outdoors and keeping a sense of wonder to their adventures.  Which would be good since they won't be picking up any great drawing skills from me this round.

Again with the Pen (and Pencils)

So I didn't quite get the eye right but decided to plug along anyway as an exercise.  In trying to focus on physical detail, I failed to convey this little Sandpiper's nervously graceful spirit.  Also, the legs didn't make it in and that was the most enchanting part.  Sorry, little buddy.

I did a series of quicker, more impressionistic sketches, one of which came out all right (your call as to which one you think that is).  I kind of like the quick one better.  Here's to improving on both styles and then being able to blend them together.

Left is:

"Sandpiper Who Immediately Came Out Wonky So I Got Frustrated, Gave Him A Stupid Leg, Weird Eye, And Colored Him Green, Then Felt Bad About It So I Gave Him A Crown But Not Too Good A One Because... Who Are We Kidding?"

Sketchin' 4: Slow Going

 "Somebody Needs to Work on his Perspective and Shading"

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"My Killdeer is Plotting Something"
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 "Overly Dignified Black Phoebe with Terrible Pine Needles"

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"You May Notice This Isn't a Bird"

Taken on a beautiful morning.  Not pictured- a beautiful sketch.

Pen and Rethink...

Slow week at the Urban Trailhead...

"Common Merganser?  I hardly knew her!"

This looks decent as an experiment with colored pencils (on loan from the Explore Tahoe Collection)

Lest you think I've made progress though, let me present:

"The Western Bluebird of Crappiness"

"The Western Bluebird of Sappiness"

"Western Bluebird Sad to See How I Must Think He Looks"

Super Bonus Sketch:

 

"Cedar "Sweet Berry" Waxwing"

 Looks a little yokel somehow.  I guess I just unconsciously like to make fun of birds.

Scribble-de-bop!

Some progress:

Top is- "Evolution of a Pied-Billed Dweeb Grebe"

Bottom is- "Prairie Falcon Enttäuschung"

I think he's bummed because someone drew his wing like a fried egg which was itself badly drawn.

Irony alert: I think it was the wing that dragged this one down.

Clowns of the Forest

Acorn Woodpecker; Meladerpes formicidorkus

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.

Acorn Woodpecker; Smoothanerpas formicivelourus