Green Heron - different pens

click image to enlarge

Just a quick post to show you the beautiful pair of green heron that have come to my pond. They are not nearly as shy as their larger cousin the great blue and I'm able to watch them through the binoculars and enjoy their beautiful plumage colors.

click image to enlarge

You can see the difference in result between the first sketch which is done with a brush pen and the second done with a fountain pen.

click image to enlarge

Here are the green heron done with yet a different pen, a calligraphy marker. I love switching it up with pens. Each type of pen gives a different line and quality of line, Line, even more so than color gives expression and personality to your sketches, so pen choice is very important. 

So these are my current fav choices for pens....Pentel Pocket Brush Pen, Platinum Carbon Fountain Pen, and Y&C 2.0 Calligraphy pen.  Be forewarned though I have an order from JetPens.com on it's way and September is typically the month I like to switch to using brown ink. I don't know why, just a seasonal ritual I suppose.

Great Egret Studies and Bonus River Otter!

click image to enlarge

Egrets are incredibly elegant birds.  Tall, and slender, with sinuous necks, and flashing, bright white plumage. They stalk along the pond edge, looking, listening, pausing, and then suddenly spearing their prey.

click image to enlarge

They are far less shy than the Great Blue Herons that come to the pond and so I have far more sketches of them. I might get five minutes of time observing the heron before he will fly away, while  I could easily have fifteen or twenty minutes at a stretch to watch the egret, who will then only fly a short ways down the pond edge. 

As an aside I will say that I was thrilled to see a river otter last week also. They are purported to be very shy but I have never found them to be so. Even though I startled this one as I was walking in the woods he stayed in the area and since I was now standing very still near the pond edge he came swimming back quite close, looked at me and seemed perfectly content to have me watching as he swam and dove.  Every time I see them in the pond I marvel at how much bigger they are than the ones at the zoo. I've talked to the staff there that feeds the otters and they tell me that their otters are a normal weight and length. They certainly look healthy and happy as they swim and splash in their pool and come swishing down their water slide. But really the otters that come to our pond are almost twice s big as the ones at the zoo!  I think that perhaps they are more muscular being wild and having great lengths of rivers, streams and ponds to navigate which also provide plenty of food for them.

click image to enlarge

Anyway back to the egrets. I see them, (one, but often a pair) almost everyday. Certainly in the morning, but then again in the early evening.  I also noticed that they fly off into the woods surrounding the pond which makes me wonder if the nest there, or perhaps just roost during the heat of midday.

They are enormous fun to sketch and I suspect that by the end of my days I'll have sketchbooks upon sketchbooks that are peppered with many, many drawings of them. 

She Sells Sea Shells

click image to enlarge

In August I'm teaching a nature journaling class called Gifts from the Sea (you can read about that and register HERE).  So to get ready I'm exploring the lovely world of shells.

Obviously, some shells are very complex shapes with spirals and spikes, twists and ridges. Others seem deceptively simple, i say deceptively because even a clam shell presents it;s own challenges when sketching.

I'm working with that same calligraphy marker I mentioned yesterday, the  2.0 Yasutomo Calligraphy Marker, and watercolors, including Daler-Rowney Pro-white something I almost always have on my palette, to boost the opacity of the paint if I need it. 

When faced with unfamiliar, complicated subjects I always like to sketch using a continuous line drawing and sometimes even just a contour drawing, that is drawing the entire outline of the shape without lifting my pen from the paper. The continuous line drawing technique is similar in that you don't lift your pen (or at least you try very hard no to !) and you can move in and out and around the subject as you sketch it instead of just staying with the outline. Before you add color these type of sketches often look like sculptures made of wire, which is a good way to think of them as your sketching. Think about your pen line as it it were a piece of flexible wire that you are bending and twisting into the shape of the shell. 

I do this because it makes me look very, very closely at my subject and feel with my eyes the shape of the thing, I get to understand its structure its proportions, its patterns and rhythms. the last two are particularly true of the shells.  

A nice rich shadow underneath the shells makes them "pop" from the page and looks really great on the creamy colored paper. 

A bit of writing and an undulating line for a border, restated with some watercolor pulls the whole page together.   

Sketching with a Calligraphy Pen

click image to enlarge

Artists never color inside the lines, obey the rules or use art supplies the "right" way.  For example I'm working in a sketchbook that I bound myself that has print making paper in it, is only 130gms2, and yet I'm using it for watercolor, gouache, fountain pen, brush pen etc. media this paper was never actually created to accept. Oh well.  

click image to enlarge

I'm also drawing with a calligraphy pen, a pen that's actually designed to hand letter with.  It's a great, inexpensive pen and I'm really enthused by the different sorts of lines it can make. I also like it's moderately bold line width.  This is a black  2.0 Yasutomo Calligraphy Marker  They come in several widths and colors, and I think they're fun to sketch with. (Plus you can write with them, like you're supposed to !)