There and Back Again: Days 36-41

A friend invited me to draw birds with her at the Natural History Museum, and, given that I love birds but don't have a lot of experience drawing them, I accepted gladly. I was feeling pretty good about my technical drawing ability by that point: my drawings had been getting better every day, and I hadn't really run into a real challenge.

Then I spent an hour and a half in the NHM failing to draw birds.

Day 36: It was pretty bad.

Frustrated, deeply, by my failure, I decided that I was going to bang my head against my inability to draw birds until I fixed it.

Day 37: Not as bad as the first attempt, but not great.

 Day 38: Better, but wings are still mysteries to me.

Day 39: I decided to draw more wings, in an effort to stop sucking at them.

Day 40: Anatomy studies. This is when I realized I was getting too wrapped up in the structure, and needed to pull back to the birds themselves.

Day 41: Success! Not, you know, the most amazing birds ever - but recognizable as themselves, and drawn without too much frustration. With this page I declared Operation: Lern 2 Burd a success, and decided to move on for the present.