Swooping Swallows

Challenges are good right? I mean they help us grow, change and improve in some way. So, feeling intrepid & perhaps a little foolhardy I decided to put this to the test. I am not the fastest of sketchers so I tend to choose wildlife that is either stationary for reasonable periods of time, such as feeding goldfinches, or those which follow a familiar pattern and repeatedly return to the same place as in the nesting nuthatches.

This is all well and good and I am comfortable and happy to do this. Sometimes, however, it can mean you limit yourself as to what you ultimately portray in your work.

Sketching and drawing are skills that need constant practice, which also means you have to vary what you draw and how you draw it. At least that’s the conclusion that I have come to with my own sketching.

So when sitting at a picnic table, watching swallows swoop low over the grass feeding on insects, I decided to have a go and step outside my comfort zone. Swallows are fast… really fast, but they do repeatedly follow the same flight patterns. It was a question of - observe them flying for while, then look, remember, sketch, look again, then correct. Oh and of course all the while wishing I had a photographic memory!

They aren’t terribly good drawings or indeed accurate, but I am pleased with what I managed to do, once I loosened up and stopped worrying about what the sketches might turn out like. I also learned that a brush pen is not the best tool for me to sketch with and I’ll stick to using them with my watercolour pencil sketching.

So, I’ll have to continue finding those difficult subjects to draw if I am going to improve. Yes, lots of practice is very much in order.