In this post i would like to show some birds that i have been drawing. I will show six different sketches and there will be three different kinds of how the drawings are made. The difference will be shown in the shading, texture, strengh of lines and the darkness of the whole drawing. There are six birds and three different ways of drawing, so i will have two birds for every kind of how i drew them.
I will start with the lightest drawings and then continue to the ones i used more ink, which doesn't mean that they are stronger in the final expression. I don‘t want to judge and say which style is better, because i think there are always many ways to reach your aim and also many people have a different taste in art.
In all of the drawings i didn‘t draw the whole body of the birds, and left some parts open to give freedom to the observer oft he birds.
This two drawings show an eagle and an eagle owl. I used a black gel pen with a thinkness of 0.7 millimeters. Normally i use pens that are even more thin, but for this drawings where i just did lines without too much hatching, i felt that the drawing will be stronger with the lines more thick.
To show the powerful eye and beak of the eagle, i hatched the direct surrounding of them very dark. Also under the wing i used more ink, to let it come out more strong and give more depth to the drawing.
The drawing of the eagle owl was very quick and i moved roughly and not to precise with the pen, which you can see in the lines of the plumage.
In these two drawings i used more ink, but still not as much as i used for the last two ones that i will show later in this post. It was difficult to decide where i want to use more ink and where i want to use less, because there is a huge contrast between white and black areas within the drawings. I used more ink on the heads to give them more importance and on the rest of the body i decided to do one edge more dark and the front and other edge more white.
For this owl i used a pen with a line that is more thin, it was 0.2 millimeters. The hatching is more precisely and gets from very dark to more light spaces. I like to leave the eyes white and empty sometimes, for me the drawing gets more interesting and mystical and also more dark, which can also be beautiful in my opinion.
In this drawing you can see a sandpiper. On the right side of the body i used a lot of cross-hatching, which is a good way for me to create a good gradient from black to white and in the other way around.
In this two drawings i used a lot of ink and drew the whole plumage of these two birds. They got really dark with a lot of black ink, but still i left some white shine in some parts of the bodies, to make some parts appear closer than others. The drawings get more volumetry and depth. Again around the eye, that is left empty in white, and at the edges of the bodies the black gets more concentrated. On the eye to make it appear stronger with the contrast, on the edges to let them appear more far.
This Capercaillie (or Mountain Cock) was done with two different hatchings. The plumage in some parts is with a very free and uncontrolled hatching and on the left side and beneath the body i used a cross hatching, that is very controlled and precise.
The Crow is the most dark bird that i drew, the hatching of the whole body is free and to the growing direction of the plumage. It is strange at the beginning and takes some curage to draw it more and more dark and use a lot of black ink but at the end i was glad of the result
I hope you like my drawings and i would be glad to hear some feedback, critics are welcome too!
Thanks for watching, cheers guys! :)