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Winter Estuary II — January 2024
I've been making my usual winter pilgrimage to my local estuary. All days are good. One never knows quite what to expect. But the calm and sunny days are perhaps my favourite. At this time of year, settled weather often means cold, which perhaps brings more birds. And sunny means beautiful low winter light and long cast shadows: all good artistic material. Here are a few of the recent sketches.
I am always attracted by groups of sleeping birds. I admit this is partly because they are easier to draw. But the groups often make pleasing compositions, and the winter light intensifies the forms and can create strong and sometimes unexpected colours. If the birds are not moving too much it is also a chance for longer looking and more considered drawing and painting.
A wakeful bird amongst a resting or sleeping group can add a little tension and interest to the picture.
A group of sleeping birds is rarely still for long. Often one or two will be preening or moving around. Preening birds offer some interesting poses and also add interest and a bit of dynamism to an otherwise static group. Or by simply having lots of birds present, one can explore the variety of form and pattern, and the relationship of birds to background.
Inevitably any sleeping group will wake up and either fly off or resume some activity. Dunlin rush around the mud in groups searching for food. And moving, feeding birds make for exciting, if difficult, subjects. Just what are those legs doing? They move so fast! The following three sketches are all of moving, feeding birds. But somehow, the last one seems most dynamic to me. Perhaps the roughness of the marks helps convey movement. The middle picture, in particular, has a static quality.
And flight, of course, is another great challenge of bird painting, at least, if one is trying to do it from life (and how else to truly capture that movement?).
Water adds more challenge. The winter light can create extraordinary colours. This is a very rough sketch of bar-tailed godwits feeding in a tight group at the water's edge. There were little breaking waves with all sort of reflections and colours. The birds themselves were very dynamic and rhythmic, moving in a tight wave themselves. This is perhaps an image to revisit and rework before the memory fades.
Finally, as a change from waders, here is a herd of wigeon grazing on the salt marsh.
