An Illustrator’s Guide to Birding
If you want to learn to draw birds in the field, how do you begin? Artist Lucy Saunders gives her top tips on capturing the essence of a bird
llustrating in the field is my way of taking the natural world home with me. It allows me to bring the softness of feathers, the vibrancy of life, and the marks of the wind and weather back home to my sofa. Sketching in my field journal has long been my escapism from the busy world of technology, into the peace and calm of being outdoors and in nature.
Birds are my subject of choice. Their mystical minds, ability to fly and sheer beauty enthral me. Each species has its own subtle personality: a Jay’s inquiring mind, or the Wren’s ability to hide, or a Long-tailed Tit’s nesting complexities. They taunt me to watch, beg me to depict with my brush the powerful flight of a bird, as Nan Shepherd writes so poetically in The Living Mountain.
Receiving a pair of binoculars at a young age, I spent hours observing birds from the kitchen window: their humour, the way they paraded around the lawn, or the way they bickered with one another over whose turn it was on the bird feeder. Pheasant feathers stood decoratively in a vase, Blackbird and Woodpigeon eggshell remains crowded the windowsill, and a striking yellow-and-black Goldfinch feather was a token I long remember finding. It was these items that formed the start of my illustrative journey.
Finding the right medium
Starting with oils, I tripped over my own paintbrush longing for paint to dry quicker, so that I could add another stroke of colour. Similarly, inks merged to form tranquil blends but were impossible to work with in the field. Acrylic dried fast, but colours were too defined, blending was difficult and I discovered that the breast of a Robin is not ‘true’ orange. More dried apricot, corals, burnt amber for shadows between plumage and peach where the sun bounces.
I experimented for many years defining colours. I would create new ones, naming them after the birds I drew inspiration from, Powdered Woodpigeon Plum being my favourite. Experimenting with style from Expressionism, Realism, and Impressionism, I tried everything I could to reflect how I felt in the field, how I saw these birds, and how I wanted other people to see them. Delicate and tenaciously tough.
Eventually, I found two media through which I could portray my observations in the field: watercolour pencils and pen. Simple yet effective. Carrying around a bag of fine-line pens is much easier than the watercolour collections I was once using. These pens, in a clear monochromatic palette, gave me the opportunity to get the strokes of feathers, glints of eyes, and quirky characteristics perfectly placed. I no longer needed to obsess over colour, freed to focus on their movements: the way they sat upon branches, collected nesting materials, gathered food and showed devotion to their offspring.
Starting a sketch
The arrival of summer allows even more daylight time to sketch in the field. I have my favourite locations, though sometimes my garden is the ideal place. The more patient you are sitting and observing, the more comfortable the nature around you becomes in your presence. Birds eventually let their fight-or-flight instincts drop when they understand you are not a threat. They dare to come closer. I always start by sketching a bird freestyle in five different positions, capturing their free-spirited movements. My pencil glides across my page mimicking them. These kaleidoscope into one another to form a basic outline of my sketch.
Using a selection of fine-line pens,
I then mark the page to add detail, always starting with the most formidable, telling aspect of any living soul – the eyes. I then work through each section of the body where details need to prevail. Working in monochrome, I have to reflect each colour of the bird by a different stroke of the pen, a different thickness of nib, a different weight of ink on the page. I try to see the birds that are in front of me in black and white, and mask their array of colour. Loose shapes slowly form into wings and a tail followed by crests and toes. All the detail is freehand and this is exactly how I like to work, rebelling over the constraints of outlines.
Wings are the most difficult part of a bird to sketch. It is the part of their biology that moves so frantically, so when sketching in the field you can miss the detail within a flitter. I find it hard to fathom the power of flight, let alone the mystical notion of how birds do this with a few wingbeats before being airborne. Trying to capture this, even on a subtle level, is the mark of a refined artist.
Just like text, drawing can be poetic. It can express not only the character of a subject, but can also tell us about the character of the artist, and how they perceive the natural world.