![]() What comes next depends on what you want to focus on-individual feathers or markings, perhaps an eye, maybe the patterns of light and dark from plumage and shadows. They’re deceptively simple, black shapes, yet they clearly represent one type of bird, even without the details. “What is finchiness, finchosity? You want your chickadee to be chickadee-esque,” says Laws, your magpie to be “magpie-y.” Think of Roger Tory Peterson’s silhouettes. ![]() Mastering these three steps helps capture what Laws calls the bird’s oomph or, as some birders say, its jizz-the essence of the species. Focusing on this open space will bring the individual’s defining edges into stark relief. ![]() I can come along and start to put in the detail.” To better identify these angles, take note of “negative space”-that is, the area around the bird that’s not bird. Meanwhile, as I scrawl with a pencil on a small sketchpad, my model-a wild bird-continues pecking at mudflats in Bolinas Lagoon, between Northern California’s Point Reyes National Seashore and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, completely oblivious to my artistic frustrations. ![]() And its legs-there shouldn’t be four of them! My bird looks like a pistachio stuck with a speared olive, walking on clothespins. I can’t get its kinked yet sinewy neck to look right. The snowy egret I’m sketching is not cooperating. Story from the Audubon Magazine, November-December 2012, by Julie Leibach ![]()
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