Yesterday's and Today's-- a Portrait of Oreo, Sketches of the Ladies, and Buddy

Once again, a portrait of our "Blue" Silkie, Oreo:

Quick Contour Doodles of "the Ladies" (as we call our large hens):

 Today's Scratch: Portrait of Buddy, face and tail, and a quick sketch of Cream, one of his wives:

Materials Note: today I bought a KOH-I-NOOR Hardtmuth "Toison D'Or" 7B pencil, and I think it was easier to do a little shading with.

Buddy (and Stella), A Study

Followed Buddy the Silkie rooster around the yard today, getting some quick drawings done of him.

I also managed to get a quick drawing of Stella done, minutes before a downpour made us scramble to get the chickens back in!

Dust Bathing Ladies

Simple Scratch again from yesterday. Doodle practicing gesture drawing while the ladies dust bathed. I spent so much time running around mediating disputes between the rival gangs/broods of our chickens and ducks, that I only got a few minutes to draw! It's all good practice, though.

Duck Quack... er... QUICK Draw

Today's Scratches are of the ducks...

Getting a Line on Shading

In some of today's Scratches, I tried to use drawing pencils of varying softnesses, and to incorporate shading and value gradations. What I seem to have achieved is still a lot of middle tone. Perhaps I need to go 6B or softer to get darks that aren't forced...

If you'd like to see a great sketcher at work in this regard, go see Victor Ambrus' book Drawing Animals. It's a wonderful compilation of his sketches from life of animals as he observed them. We're all duffers compared to him when it comes to sketching from life, and maintaining energy in line while incorporating value and focus areas...