Sunday Sketches: Winter Birds

Today I am pondering a painting subject that illustrates wintertime. Pretty quickly I settled on the humble chickadee. It is an ever curious, constantly moving little bird. Today our backyard chickadees are flying back and forth from the tube feeder. Each bird selects and grabs one sunflower before darting up to a tree branch where it consumes its quarry.

Fortunately for me, Bill has shared two photographs of chickadees suitable for my planned painting. But working out a composition that uses both birds is not coming easily to me.

Chickadee 1.

Chickadee 2.

My first try at a composition is awkward and unsatisfactory to me, so it won’t even get shared. I decided to make ink sketches of these two photographs, which will get them familiar and warm me up to the task.

On an 8 by 8 inch piece of paper, the little chickadee, which measures barely 4 inches, can be drawn at its full size. First, I worked out the placement using pencil, then inked the contours lines, adding value with various types of marks. My sweet subjects, black and white IRL, were rendered with ease.

This one is very curious indeed.

This one is demonstrating his love of sunflower seeds.

My two chickadee drawings are numbers 42 and 43 in the 100day project.

Now I need to figure out a scene that will serve as a setting for the two birds.