Making your nature journal sketches come alive
Laurie Wigham
Presented at Nature Journal Club classes in the San Francisco Bay Area, July 2015
Sitting down
making short strokes
with a soft pencil
on lightly textured paper
Standing up
making sweeping strokes
with stick dipped in ink
on smooth paper
MAKES A
DIFFERENT MARK FROM
For example...
Designed to make the identifying features diagrammatically clear, but they can be a little dull.
From Birds of North America
Bird ID drawings
How to show the life of the bird?
Use the energy of the lines to show the fierce challenge of a wren.
David Koster “Snowy Owl” from John Busby’s Drawing Birds
What does the line quality tell you about this owl?
David Bennett “Bar-tailed Godwits Taking Off” from John Busby’s Drawing Birds
Wild marks can tell you about a moment of glorious chaos
Start with careful study, learning about your subject.
The expressive line can come later when you understand what you’re seeing.
Moving from the left brain to the right
Corn lily study
As you get to know your subject better, go more abstract, trying to show what you see about the essence of that plant.
Corn lily study
All are true representations of how it felt to be in a field of corn lilies on that hot Sierra summer day.
Using fast straight lines for bird tails
Quick flicks of lines show the way a Tailorbird’s tail flicks up
Marsh WrenPhoto by Vivek Khanzodé
birdpixel.com
Song SparrowPhoto by Vivek Khanzodé
birdpixel.com
Long-tailed BushtitPhoto by Ashok Khosla
seeingbirds.com
Try it yourself, using fast strokes for the tails, beaks, legs
Run your pencil up the lines of these leaves
A juicy loaded sable brush on smooth paper made these marks.
Get to know your stick
1. Break off a little bit of the end with your fingernail to make a point.
You can use different sticks with different points.
2. See what kinds of marks your stick wants to make.
3. Try making the same kinds of marks you made earlier with the pencil:
• Fast and energetic • Lazy slow curves
Give those birds another try, with sticks this time
Marsh WrenPhoto by Vivek Khanzodé
birdpixel.com
Song SparrowPhoto by Vivek Khanzodé
birdpixel.com
Long-tailed BushtitPhoto by Ashok Khosla
seeingbirds.com
More bird photos to practice on
Take a look at the websites of these Nature Journal Club members who have generously offered to let us use their photos as reference for drawings.
(Note that if you publish any of those drawings you should get permission from the photographer, credit them and include a link to the site.)
Ashok Khoslaseeingbirds.com
Vivek Khanzodébirdpixel.com
Most of you got beautiful results with the stick because it was it was a stranger to you.
You didn’t know what it was going to do, so you paid attention to the mark on the page and let the stick tell you what it wanted to do.
You can apply the same thinking to any other medium to make your drawings come alive.
Inspiration from many sources
See these Flickr galleries with work by many artists:
Gesture in nature journals 1
Gesture in nature journals 2
For more info about Nature Journal Club events, go to:
johnmuirlaws.com
To get on the mailing list for other classes I’m teaching, email me at:
For info about the San Francisco sketching meetup group, go to:
meetup.com/sf-sketchers
Some links
This presentation is copyright Laurie Wigham, July 2015
and may not be reproduced without permission.
All artwork ©Laurie Wigham except where otherwise credited.
Contact: [email protected]
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