Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
This morning a skein of 60 or 70 wild grey geese went over, heading west. Our local Canada Geese meanwhile had gathered on a shingle bank on the quiet inner bend of the meander of the River Calder around the marshy field known as the Wyke.
This is my final spread for my Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate Domestika course by Román García Mora, drawn on the iPad in Procreate.
Canada goose plumage swatches, drawn on the iPad in Procreate for my Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate Domestika course by Román García Mora.
The next step on my Procreate animal illustration course is to take one of my thumbnail sketches and try it with three different lighting set-ups. I’ve gone for the light coming from the left, the right and from below (as if the goose had been caught in the beam from car headlights).
The one I like best is the light from above left and slightly behind, with a glint of reflected light from the bottom right.
Then it’s on to a rough drawing, not too detailed, but indicating the different areas of plumage.
I’m picking up again on Román García Mora’s Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate course and here we’re asked to work towards our final illustration by trying out miniature sketches of different poses of our animal or bird.
From the nine I’ve now got to choose three for my final spread. I’m intending to go for a flying goose top left, a main illustration bottom right facing into the page and somewhere in between, a small sketch illustrating some kind of behaviour.
I showed this to John – who is still surviving in the hospice – and he liked the aggressive goose in the centre and the one shown feeding in the water.
On Román García Mora’s Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate course I’ve gone back to a ‘task’ in an earlier unit, ‘Sketching in Front of the TV’. On YouTube I’ve found a National Geographic video of Canada geese taking off and drawn them on freeze-frame.
Having drawn them so much from life with wings folded it’s interesting to see what happens when the wings open up.
Rather than re-draw the Canada goose from my sketchbook, today I went to Procreate’s ‘Action’ menu and chose ‘Take a photo’ and used the rear camera of the iPad. I scaled up the photo to get the drawing I was after to fill the canvas.
Now that I’m more familiar with the process of putting together a drawing, following Román García Mora’s suggestions for an ‘illuminated drawing’, the next stage is to get more of the natural variation of watercolour washes into the illustration.
Wet weather even for the ducks and geese this morning so I’m trying the process of drawing an animal in Procreate on an iPad Pro as suggested by Román García Mora in his Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate course on Domēstika.
His favourite style is what he calls ‘illuminated drawing’ in the tradition of 18th and 19th century natural history illustration where a line drawing of the animal was printed and the colour added by hand in watercolour, so you get the definition of an ink drawing and the luminosity of watercolour.
10.05 a.m.: I’m counting about 85 Canada geese this morning but a passing dog walker tells me that for two days last week he thought that they’d deserted, there were none on the lake.
Two passers by comment on the single drake mandarin that is looking immaculate but sadly hasn’t yet attracted a mate. I’m here for the geese but if he swims over towards me I won’t be able to resist drawing him.
11 am: All the geese leave the pond and a flock of about 50 graze on the grassy slope.
After two hours I’d almost finished this spread in my sketchbook but the last Canada goose was drawn back home from a photograph on the big screen of the iMac. I’m pleased that it looks equally as messy – let me rephrase that ‘equally as spontaneous’ – as the sketches done on location, sitting by the outlet of the Thornes Park Fish Pond, sometimes under an umbrella as fine rain fell.
Canada geese at Newmillerdam this morning.
