Rooftop Crows

Give me corvids any day! I love them all, but have a particular fondness for crows. They are so full of character and have such a striking silhouette, particularly when in flight. My exasperated mother, who detested my teenage penchant for wearing black, frequently commented that my clothes hanging out to dry looked like a flock of agitated crows. Of course I took this as a complement and a sort of kinship with my feathered counterparts was born.

My new ‘studio’ space – an upstairs bedroom, is quite a novelty. I’m so used to working at ground level, but there really is something quite elevating working up at roof height. I am now on a level with birds in higher branches and can observe all sorts of behaviour, which is a struggle to see from lower down.

One beautiful evening, I sat watching a crow, which was perched on a television aerial, burnished by the glow of the setting sun. I did my best to scrawl a quick sketch using a uni pin fine line pen and watercolour paint. I find it particularly challenging to capture these beauties in flight, but am trying to move towards sketching directly with my brush, rather than relying heavily on a graphite outline. As I say, challenging.

#photo