This week, I had a run-in with an important art lesson, and had some fun whilst learning it. A while back, during last semester, my first project for printmaking was this intaglio print of a crow, shown above. I was satisfied with him. He was just a cartoony little guy as a first test for printmaking. I sent a picture to my grandmother after I’d completed him and her immediate response was disgust that I’d drawn a dead bird. I just figured her eyesight must’ve been getting bad and she just wasn’t “seeing the vision.” At the beginning of this week, a friend of mine also misinterpreted my fun bird. I know his eyesight isn’t that bad, so I got to thinking and realized that birds don’t work the way that I drew my crow. I’m very used to drawing mammals, so making things very curvy and animated is my jam, and it isn’t usually too unrealistic. Aaanyway, birds aren’t mammals, and their necks can’t do that crazy thing, so I figured, “Hey, why don’t I redraw it?”
Redraws are good for the artist mind. I think we all know this. Over time, your skill will improve. You’ll notice things that are wrong anatomically, contrast problems, lack of refinement, style disagreements, etc. etc. I also hate redrawing things. I don’t want to do the same thing over again! I already did that >:( In this case, I deemed it important, though. I can’t be making a bunch of dead birds just because I didn’t use enough reference and didn’t know how birds worked. That’s a problem. So, to keep my interest, I started with a mammalian form in a similar pose to show what the intended look of the crow was. I, of course, did this in my comfort zone and drew a unicorn.
So the unicorn began, but as I was making it, a cat appeared on my page! Suffice it to say, I have no idea how that happened. I couldn’t have put that there! I never get distracted while sketching! Ok, in all seriousness, a major point of this exercise is creating my art mostly from the mind. I’m way more comfortable working from an image or from life. Creating things the way I want them to look from my brain is a struggle to me, but also an aspiration. So, mid-unicorn, I drew from a picture of my cat to bring me back into the spirit of things, and it did 🙂 I then started the crow.
Now that I had an example of what I was originally going for, it was time to start the work on the crow itself. It took a few redraws, lots of references, and some talk with the resident bird expert, but I got there. The pose had to be changed, but the idea is still the same. I made the body less curved, fixed the wings… many times over, and go the piece to a point where I was happy with it and it feels like a live bird. The keen of sight may notice that I made him more realistic than the previous. That was just to keep things interesting. You may not have noticed, but I get bored easily 🙂 I think he comes across a lot better than the original, but who knows, maybe in a year or two he’ll need a redraw again! That’s the beauty of being an artist, you grow and improve every time you create, and after a while, it becomes noticeable if it wasn’t before.
Overall, I think this experience was worthwhile! I got to see some visible improvement, hone some sketching skills, learn some anatomy, and also do some pencil sketching, since I hadn’t in a bit. Sketching is 100% my favorite art form, hands down, so its always fun for me to learn something new and just do it 🙂 Plus, I can now draw more birds to further this practicing endeavor. More things to come!