Golden Eagle update

Quick update shot of progress so far with the eagle study.It's my wedding anniversary today so i've cut short my working day and am going to take my long-suffering wife out for a slap up meal tonight.

Golden Eagle study progress

After a good degree of fiddling the head of the eagle is now complete and i have started to move onto the body feathers.At the risk of sounding monotonous these are completed in exactly the same way as all elements of my drawings by layering,layering and more layering.I find that the only difference when portraying feathers as opposed to fur is that i use sharper pencils as i'm working on smaller areas at a time and dont tend to use quite so soft grades of pencil.In portraying the feathers i also use direct marks in helping to give the impression of the individual vanes of the feathers.Working on feathers is quite time consuming compared to drawing fur for me as i tend to work on each feather,layering until completion,then move onto the next and so on whereas with fur i can layer the whole area in one hit,saving a lot of time.

Golden Eagle study progress

Working on the feather detail on the eagles head today.This is by far the most difficult part of this particular picture especially describing the smaller feathers around the throat and ear coverts.As usual i'm using layering initially and then making more direct marks using B and 2B grades of pencil.In the photo you can see that the throat feather depiction is almost complete and the ear coverts have a couple of layers of pencil applied.

Golden Eagle study progress

Seems like ive been layering the background to this image forever,i started as usual with an H grade pencil and have used every grade upto and including an 8B layer after layer,i just kept going as i wasn't happy with it untill i got it really dark.I'm hoping i havn't gone too dark as i'm in unknown territory here with such soft pencils but i just thought it might add a little drama to the image.Anyway having finished the background ive now moved onto the eagle itself and completed the beak and eye before moving onto the feathering which ive begun to gently layer with H and HB grades so far.Just as with my previous partridge picture i aim to show with great detail all the plumage of the bird and so i anticipate this taking a while.

Golden Eagle study

Busy layering away on the background of this piece.I've gone quite dark on this one in order to try and add a little drama as it is going to have strong lighting applied to the head to make it really stand out.As ive got this image on my small board it may once again be usurped at some stage by another drawing on the large board especially as i seem to be brimming over with idea's at the moment and i'm marginally more excited with some of these idea's than with the eagle study.That's not to say that the eagle wont be a worthy drawing it's just that it may get very tricky if my mind is already thinking about another image.But for the time beeing i persevere.....

partridge complete

Finished up the partridge today,i'm calling it Winter Chill-partridge.Also just received the scan for Resting Up-greylag geese so i'm posting this as it's a lot better quality than my own photographic efforts.i have a golden eagle image on my second drawing board at the moment,although i'm not sure whether to carry on with this one right now as i'm quite keen to get some of the images down on paper that are sticking in my mind after recent birdwatching forays in the last week.

partridge update

After a few days away from the drawing board ive at last been able to progress this piece to the point where it's very nearly complete.Just the birds legs and a bit of tweaking to go.