Sunday, June 17, 2012

Sketchy Sunday: Hunting Hawk

Back on schedule, I think... Here's a few sketches of a hawk hunting for small rodents in dense ground cover, sketched in the Botanic Garden (last year or the year before.) First he flew down and apparently missed whatever he was after; then he wandered around in the ivy with his wings spread out, trying to find his prey; finally he tried to pounce on something and flew back to his perch. I think he was a young hawk and fairly inexperienced, he didn't seem to be very good at this hunting business yet. (Also included is a doodle of a random slouching squirrel that was on the same page.)

2 comments:

  1. How do you keep up with moving animals to make this detailed sketches of them? I tried to sketch a goat that was just slowly grazing and still couldn't get anything but a few lines on paper, and here you have a hawk in mid-flight with feathers and all. Just, wow.

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    1. I was lucky to have a teacher who was really into having us do fast gestures for several years... Though usually what happens when I draw creatures in motion is I get a really incoherent scribble-gesture first, and then I flesh it out from memory (preferably right after looking at it. Sometimes later on, but I get better results if I flesh it out within minutes of seeing it.)

      Sometimes if something is moving very fast there's literally no time to put down a single line while the action is happening, so in those cases I watch closely and try to take a kind of mental snapshot, and then draw it immediately after seeing it. (Results vary.)

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