Drawing from Life

With the vast majority of my artwork I am working from a selection of photographs but it is still important part of art education to get out there and do some drawings from life. These can be much more difficult to do as it is easy for perspective and lighting to change whilst drawing and in terms of animals they can very easily just get up and move, leaving your sketch permanently in limbo.

When I was studying art in college drawing from life took 2 forms: still lifes and life drawing (of human models). It can be hard to know where to begin with life drawing but tips we were given were to not worry about what we were doing, never to erase the marks we made, and to work FAST. And it was fast, we were given time periods of 60 seconds, 30, and 10. Giving yourself these short time limits is a great way of getting started. 

Something else that's useful when drawing live animals is to do focus on drawing when the animal is at rest. This is what I did of my dog and here are the results. 

Don't expect to finish your sketches though, it's very easy for a shift in position or something to happen (a sudden noise or someone walking by) that mean that you cannot continue the same drawing. Working from life is more about building up as much as you are able to in order to convey what you are seeing. 

Drawings really do feel more 'alive' when sketches from life!

See gulls

I've just started painting a little study of a beach scene with a gull in the foreground. Sounds simple (and it kind of is really) but when you are painting wildlife it can be important that you get an accurate depiction of the species you are painting (and we're not talking about proportions here). In this case - there are a lot of sea gull species and if you are presenting to a wildlife savvy bunch they're going to know if what you have painted is right or not. If it isn't it can be a little embarrassing as you should know what you are painting. I've certainly made that mistake in the past and it isn't just features it's also their behaviour and habitat. In my case I portrayed a carrion-eating critter as a fierce predator. Whoops.

I've decided to paint a Common gull, so it needs to look like one. So what makes this grey-and-white gull different from all the other grey-and-white gulls? In fact how do you tell any of them apart? Thankfully I have a bird book and to me it seems there are 5 main things that are useful to look at: the bill, the head, the back, wingtips, and the legs.

The bill: this is usually red or yellow in gulls. Some have yellow bills with a red spot for young to aim for to get food from the adults. For me I have to remember the common gull has a shortish yellow bill, no spot.

The head: usually gulls have a white or black head, although the black-headed gull actually has a brown head. Common gull has a white head.

The back: how dark the grey is on the back can be useful, Herring gulls have light silver backs and very dark backs belong to Greater black-backed gulls.

The wingtips: most gulls have black wingtips with white flecks called 'mirrors'. Some lack the mirrors and a few even have white tips such as the Glaucous gull.

The legs: Sometimes this can be sometimes the only real visible difference. Gulls tend to have yellow, pink or red legs. Although the Kittiwake has black legs and the Common gull has green.

So sometimes painting wildlife isn't as always as simple as you think. But I think as an animal painter I should want to learn about the subjects I paint and it certainly helps you enjoy the natural world more when you know more about it!

Here's the process so far.

Roughing out the scene

Making the background more opaque, adding little reflection touches.

Working on some of the gull's details, adding some sand texture and shadow. I still need to work on the foreground, details in the gull and the lighting before I'm done.

Marden Meadows

Despite the greyness (and drizzle) of the weekend we made it for our second successive trip down to Marden Meadows to see the green-winged orchids. It was hard to capture how many there were amongst the golden meadow buttercups and the yellow rattle but hopefully you can see something of it in my photos.

I'm about to start work on at least one new wildlife painting, stay tuned to see what it is!

May time orchids

I love the month of May. To me it is one of the best times of the year, wildflowers are blooming and there's that bright fresh green you get when trees first come into leaf. I headed out on some walks across the weekend and now is a really good time to see some wild orchids.

I visited Park Gate Down, mainly to catch the Early Purple orchids before they die off. Crimson patches were dotted around and it was good to see some were still at the best as most had started to go over.

Getting closer to the ground to take some photos I also saw that Fly orchids (aptly named) were starting to flower and the extremely rare Monkey orchids (below right) were also beginning to open up. There were some other large orchids growing but at this stage my limited knowledge means I can't tell what they are just yet.

I will be heading off to see the beautiful Green-winged orchids at Marden Meadows next week. I know they are flowering right now so hopefully they still will be at their best (the weather too!). I visited there last year and it was fantastic with thousands of them in full bloom (see below) along with water violets around the ponds and other unusual species such as midland hawthorn and adder's tongue fern. I also spied a fair few white helleborines growing in a woodland near to me so it's a great time to be out and about!