Thing a Day 2009- Day 1 (Dylan the Parakeet)
I almost forgot that today was the first day of February! Luckily I remembered in time, and made a drawing of my parakeet Dylan. Posted on the Thing a Day blog too. There are a lot of cool things posted already!
I learned a few things from this:
1. Hyperactive parakeets are difficult to draw! He kept moving around. He finally sat still for just long enough for me to get the basic shape right, and then I filled in some of the details as he was running back and forth in his cage.
2. I haven’t ENTIRELY forgotten how to draw things from life, despite the fact that I never do it anymore. If I do draw it’s usually more like abstract doodles or imaginary plants or something. I’m pretty happy with how this drawing turned out.
3. I hate charcoal! I bought some charcoal pencils to use for this project, and in the middle of making this drawing remembered why I stopped using it and pencils and pretty much only ever use pen to draw or write with. Smudgy! Maybe it’s worse because I’m left handed. The whole side of my hand was black by the time I was done. All the areas I wanted to leave light gotsort of grey, and I had to go and hunt for an eraser (another thing I don’t use since I only use pen). I finally found a really crappy eraser on the end of a pencil stub in the back of a drawer.
4. I was worried that 20 minutes would not be enough time, but it was actually perfect.
It’s so difficult to find good drawings of parakeets.
Owls are everywhere, but parakeets, no. I think it’s harder to capture the spirit of parakeets (or maybe their energy is the problem, like you were saying!).
Thanks for this great drawing!