Understanding birds’ general anatomy, discussed in Laws’s book, will help you make sense of your observations. What comes next depends on what you want to focus on-individual feathers or markings, perhaps an eye, maybe the patterns of light and dark from plumage and shadows. They’re deceptively simple, black shapes, yet they clearly represent one type of bird, even without the details. ![]() “What is finchiness, finchosity? You want your chickadee to be chickadee-esque,” says Laws, your magpie to be “magpie-y.” Think of Roger Tory Peterson’s silhouettes. Mastering these three steps helps capture what Laws calls the bird’s oomph or, as some birders say, its jizz-the essence of the species. Focusing on this open space will bring the individual’s defining edges into stark relief. “I then have a framework I can come along and start to put in the detail.” To better identify these angles, take note of “negative space”-that is, the area around the bird that’s not bird. “I think of carving those into these bubbles of proportion that I’ve set up,” says Laws. Once the proportions check out, look for the bird’s defining angles, such as where the head and tail connect with the body. And at that point, there’s nothing that you can really do to fix that.” (You can use an eraser, but I find it cumbersome.) “That’s because you have a western sandpiper with a head the size of a chickadee. “At the end of the drawing they’ll say, ‘My bird looks wrong’,” says Laws. At this stage-and this is critical-double-check your work. The result should be something vaguely resembling Frosty the Snowman. Where is the head relative to the body, and what size are the two? Using the initial line you drew as a guide, block in the proportions with circular shapes. First, before anything, notice the bird’s posture-is it looking up? Head down?-and draw a simple line, like an axis, suggestive of that position. To get started, he instead suggests three basic steps. But that’s not the best approach, according to Laws. If tasked with penciling in, say, a blue jay perched on a nearby branch, I probably would have begun by outlining its contours. While I am somewhat artistic, until my course with Laws, I had virtually no experience drawing birds aside from the occasional doodle. “You’re seeing details that have always been there in front of you but you’ve never really been able to focus on,” says Laws. “We have this myth that drawing is a gift,” says Laws, but “it’s a skill that any of us can learn.” What’s more, developing that skill leads to much more than just artwork-it can make you a better birder or naturalist by forcing you to pay close attention to what you’re sketching. They make their print debut this September in his new book, The Laws’ Guide to Drawing Birds (Heyday Books). Now 46, Laws has devised a novel array of tips that may not transform you overnight into the next David Sibley but are easy and rewarding to follow. A family friend turned him on to drawing, a pursuit that became an essential tool-Laws is severely dyslexic and supplements written observations of the natural world with sketches. ![]() Raised by an amateur botanist and a birder, Laws learned to love nature at an early age. After a morning crash course on the basics, set in the classroom, Laws has led about a dozen of us adult students into a breezy, sun-streaked April day to try our hands at field sketching. My instructor is John Muir Laws, a California-based artist, naturalist, educator, scientist, and field guide author (he’s related only “by spirit” to the legendary naturalist). ![]() I’m enrolled in an avian drawing class at the Point Reyes Birding and Nature Festival.
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