Cranes

Gouache and watercolor.

Kingfishers

Watercolor and Albrecht Dürer water color pencils.

I got a painting assignment to paint a Christmas present. Eventually out of the favorite birds of the person receiving the present I chose the Common Kingfisher.

Since I'd never seen kingfishers in real life, I got to know the bird better from pictures and videos. I did some sketching from the videos - the best substitute available to sketching from live birds (and I love the pause button!). After that I did the first sketch of the birds without reference, then with pictures got the details and patterns in place.

After which I spent a couple of nights just painting.

I really enjoyed getting to know these little birds better. Hopefully it won't be long before I get to see some live.

Lesser White-fronted Geese in moonlight

Should've been sleeping. But the inspiration hit me - I felt I just had to go on and make this idea of a painting into a real painting. I used the Albrecht Dürer watercolor pencils as both watercolors and pencils on this one.

Detail of the LWfGs. Should've shaded the bottom side of the tail.

More LTTs

I just had to have another go on Long-tailed tits. This time watercolor on cardboard.

Long-tailed tits

Oh joy, I was birding with a friend of mine when we encountered a fellow birder ringing Longtailed tits. I got to hold one, and to release one. Seeing them up close was quite special, Long-tailed tit has always been one of my favorite bird species. I was grinning for the rest of the day.

The painting wasn't done very "seriously" - just a quickie with no idea on how I wanted it to turn out. It's all paint (gouache), there was now drawing on the cardboard, even no sketches. I started by jotting down beaks and eyes all around the board and then working forward from there.

I've now signed up to take a ringing exam.

Whinchat

Today I had the opportunity to sketch a sweet little Whinchat. It was flying from a tree to another, and finally stayed for a while singing in a bare tree. The cloud formations behind it were quite special, but unfortunately I couldn't quite capture them in my gouache painting of the little Whinchat.

The Whinchat surprised me with its vocal abilities: I'd never have imagined it could have such a variety of sounds included in its song. Definitely one of my favorite singers!

Little Tern

I've been learning to use gouache for the past week or so, and at the moment I'm enjoying using this kind of paint a lot. Today I ended up painting a little tern I observed and sketched yesterday. At first it was just flying around fishing enthusiastically. Finally it decided to have a bath and then do some preening on the shore.

There's something wrong with the wing and the wing feathers. I'll have to pay more attention on how the wing folds next time I get to observe a preening tern.

Phalaropes!

Red-necked Phalaropes are such cute things, so I was more than happy, when I got to scetch them through a friends telescope for a while on Monday. The painting I did based on the scetches and checking color pattenrs and details from photos.

A Phalarope running on sand was a new sight to me. There were 5 of them scurrying arond among the gulls. Eventually some of them decided to give us a swimming performance, swirling in water in their trademark manner.

The beginning - Azure tit

Welcome to my very first blog!

I've been drawing ever since I was just a little girl. Some of my very first scetches include a whole page full of birds. Though during elementary school and junior high my main drawing objects were wolves, foxes, dogs and cats, I've now started to return to my roots - to drawing birds.

During Fall 2006 I started to get more serious about birdwatching. As I realised I didn't have a camera to record my sightings visually, I had only one option left - to draw down what I saw. And when an Azure tit appeared in my home city (a very rare migrant from Russia), I was desparate to have some kind visual record of my encounter with the blue and white little fellow.

I didn't have much of a chance to make field scetches, but later on I did some based on memory, and checking the color patterns from a bird guide. Since I wasn't satisfied, I moved on to do some drawings based on actual pictures, and after that took out my memories again and did a couple of drawings and paintings.

The Azure liked to hang around in bushes. It was December, and the seashore was dull gray and cold, but the little thing was happily hopping around in the bushes, brightening up the day of those, who got to see it. I've wanted to see one ever since 1999 when I first saw a picture of one. Thus the encounter was extra special for me.

It was quite a sight to have my "dream bird" right in front of me at a close distance, calmly minding its own business. It flew to the top of the reed...and slid down. Flew up again...and slid down, obviously having (almost as much) fun as the one observing it. The Azure is still the most special rarity I've seen, and no doubt will remain the dearest.