Snipe and Teal
Posted October 2022 (Archived)
I intended to post this piece months ago, but for various reasons, never got around to it. So it is a bit out of sequence.
Back in early February I spent a couple of days visiting RSPB Ham Wall in the Avalon Marshes and WWT Slimbridge. Both places are excellent for birds at this season, but looking through my sketches when I got home, it seems I spent most of my time looking at sleepy Snipe and Teal. Here are a few of the sketches.
I enjoy drawing sleeping birds. The lack of movement gives an opportunity to spend time looking at plumage details, or to focus on the shapes and patterns and their relation to the surrounding habitat. The forms of sleeping birds are often pleasingly sculptural. However, one of my Aunties used to tease me regularly about drawing sleeping birds with hidden beaks and legs, claiming that I did it simply to avoid all the tricky bits... Well yeah... she was right of course!
A characteristic of sleeping birds is that they invariably wake up at some point. Usually at the most inconvenient time, halfway through a drawing, or just as paint is about to be applied. If lucky, when they wake, they just go back to sleep in much the same position, and the painting can continue. But more often they move around, start preening or feeding, or simply fly away. All that movement creates new drawing possibilities, but it doesn't help the first picture get finished!
Winter wetlands are great for ducks and waders of all sorts. Numbers can vary with the weather, but I always like to see different species mingled together.
At Ham Wall the sunlight was strong. A fine group of Shoveler were partially backlit giving their normally dark green heads a wonderful bright purple fringe. Amongst them stood lapwing, but they were uniformly dark and neutral, with no sign of their iridescent greens and purples — the angle of the sun was not right for them.
The picture below was started in the field, but fell victim to a combination of sleeping birds waking up and wandering off, and the cramped and dark working conditions in the hide (my excuse for a wishy-washy watercolour). So I tried to re-invigorate it back in the studio by slapping on some more paint and pastel pencil.
I wasn't very satisfied, so attacked it again with acrylic and pastel. After a couple of iterations I ended up with the version below. It's different. Whether it's better I leave to you to decide. I've put it away in a corner and will get it out in a few months time and look at it again, and decide then whether it goes in the bin or into the drawer of "keepers".
A couple more Snipe
I love the shapes and cryptic markings of snipe: they are always a joy to draw. Here are a couple more sketches. The first was a largish painting interrupted by birds waking up and flying off. This, I think, was fortuitous because it was a really bad picture. I snipped this bit out to keep as reference material and I actually quite like just as it.
The second is just a pencil sketch, complete in itself.
Frogs in the garden pond 2022
This year the first frog was spotted in our garden pond on 29th January and first spawn appeared on 12th February. Spawning was a bit earlier this year, but it was a lacklustre affair with far fewer frogs. I counted 12. Last year there were at least 22. I have the impression that numbers have been dwindling year on year and wish I had more quantitative records from years gone by.
Then, almost as soon as the action had begun, it was over. I didn't get any drawing done. Now the spawn has largely sunk out of sight
and the the frogs have disappeared. I hope for better next year.