Thursday, October 4, 2012

birds nest version 2: Alissa Duke

This is version 2 is my drawing of my birds nest (before I read all the wonderful advice I have been given about drawing them). I've just tried to draw it as I usually would . Lots of problems with light and dark colour and shadows. .I am going to be drawing this over and over again, hopefully gaining knowledge along the way and finding a technique that suits my watercolour pencils and my style of drawing.

Version 1 was in ink


The nest is 4 x 6 x 8 cm and advice from Queenland Museum is that it may be from a silvereye.


Silvereyes are small birds and more common in the south-east of Australia. Their nest is a small, neatly woven cup of grasses, hair, and other fine vegetation, bound with spider web. It is placed in a horizontal tree fork up to 5m above the ground The Silvereye is a small bird with a conspicuous ring of white feathers around the eye, and belongs to a group of birds known as white-eyes. It has a grey back and olive-green head and wings.   Sources: http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Zosterops-lateralis www.birdlife.org.au/bird-profile/silvereye  

or it may may belong to a Rufous Fantail, Rhipidura rufifrons or a Grey Fantail, Rhipidura albiscapa
http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Rhipidura-albiscapa 
http://www.birdsinbackyards.net/species/Rhipidura-rufifrons

although there nests are descibed as being built in a thin tree-fork, unusually between 2 and 5 metres from the ground. It is made of fine grass bound together with large amounts of spider web. The bottom of the nest is drawn out into a long stem, resembling that of a wine-glass. My nest does not have a long stem at the bottom.


6 comments:

  1. Omigosh, Alissa, it's AMAZING. You did a wonderful job...I can feel the softness and texture.

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  2. I can't believe you could improve on this one Alissa. What Kate said.

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  3. Beautiful, Alissa!! Amazing work. I must look more as you sure do...I am inspired now.. Thank you so much for your kind visit at my blog recently! I'm glad the event was interesting to read and gain some insight into!

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  4. Spectacular. You are so masterful at capturing (with beauty and grace) the thing-ness of natural object.

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  5. This is just beautiful, I think your painting makes the nest far more beautiful than it is in real life! Awesome

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  6. wow - thank you all. With all that praise I could amost be tempted not to further investigate how to draw nests. ExceptI don't feel comfortable about how to appraoch drawing a nest. I am really looking forward to experimenting a bit. I am going to make notes about each book and what I have learnt from it.

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