I mentioned in my previous post that to help me explore drawing further, I am taking a drawing course at Emily Carr University of Art & Design. On the first lesson we focused on line qualities. I really liked that lesson. It got me thinking of different ways to draw birds–my current drawing project. I’ve long known that I’m really drawn to line drawing as opposed drawing something realistically with tone and proper shading. So this class really spoke to me.
Last Saturday I drew another bird from my visit at Bloedel Conservatory. The great thing about drawing from your own photographs is that you have many views of the bird and this can help you remember something of the creature’s behaviour which can inform your drawing. So here is the Sulphur Crested Cockatoo. It is known for its expressive yellow crest but at the time of my visit, the crest seemed to be closed up. This bird is native to Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania. And they can live up to 80 years in captivity!!!
While I was putting this collage together I was listening to music by Calexico and so the words came from a song they were singing.
Six days later I drew the same bird but with line quality in mind. The image below was part of my art journaling for that day and I was inspired by having just read this from a book called Carr, O’ Keeffe, Kahlo: Places of Their Own by Sharyn Rohlfen Udall:
(on Frida Kahlo)…some of the telling symbols of migration between worlds are winged creatures, whose flight readily suggests the allegory of soul flight or of the artists’s own shamanic transmigration into other realms.
