A Delightful Week of Bird Drawing

And learning about ‘birbness’

Illustration of a baby Canada goose by the author

To help demonstrate July’s Weeds & Wildflowers prompt, I drew the charming little bird from the photo by Christine Morris Ph.D.

I chose to draw it in a stylized manner rather than trying to be realistic. You can see my drawing on the prompt:

Shake It Up!

It occurred to me that I’d like to be able to draw birds in my usual semi-realistic style. To do that, I’d need to learn more about bird anatomy, and maybe do some studies from real life. I filed the thought away as a fun project for later.

Then I ambled off to do an unrelated art series, drawing fantasy characters. I had fun, and I was still in the art mood…

Reader, I made 49 sketches of birds in a week. I’m not sure what happened.

Illustration of a magpie by the author

The number seems absurd to me now. However, it started simply enough. I collected a number of reference images. The…