I'm gonna check on that.
I don't know what it is.
You'll see.
It's a painting.
Can you tell me what it is?
It's a painting.
A painting.
I don't know, but I think it's a painting.
It's a painting.
I don't know.
Hello, everyone.
I'm Captain Bob.
My TV programs about drawing and animals and the nature world around us have been broadcast
for years.
And because so many of you like to sketch, I've designed this special Let's Draw series
just for you with plenty of time for the drawing part, too.
Like an art course of your very own for your very own enjoyment, and you'll be able to
use and reuse each session and practice as you wish, when you wish.
We'll have fun with drawing and sketching and learn how easy it is to achieve fine results,
how easy it is to become a really good artist.
Many different choices, too, animals, landscapes, seascapes, still life, and we'll find out
about light and shade and perspective and balance and how to use all this for better
results.
And incidentally, the tools that you can use could be anything, pencils, crayons, markers,
anything you'd have around the house, nothing special needed.
Perhaps the first thing folks say to me about trying to draw is, oh, wow, I can't even draw
a straight line.
Well, believe me, neither can I.
You'd need a ruler for that.
If you're sketching curving lines, they're best anyway.
Look closely at this panda on the drawing board.
Look at that large round head, no straight lines there, and the eyes and the mouth and
the curves of the body.
I've used chalk and black crayon to draw this wonderful animal.
You know, the panda comes from China, living in cool, moist highlands.
They look as though they were related to bears, don't they?
But that's not true, for scientists say they belong to the raccoon family.
Once, long ago, pandas were meat eaters, but they've turned into vegetarians, and they
dearly love tender bamboo.
Strangely, the panda is equipped with what's called elongated wrist bones, so the front
paws can bend, unlike other animals, that is handy for holding food.
Should you have the chance to visit pandas in a zoo, be careful and stay clear of them.
They tend to be gentle animals, but their massive forearms and sharp claws can inflict
frightful wounds, even by accident.
To demonstrate the use of curving lines, let me sketch a proportion drawing that is a layout
of a horse.
Now, he won't be finished here, but just let me take the panda off, put him over here,
save him for later, and try this horse drawing.
You don't have to draw with me on this one.
I'm going to start with a curving line that will be the chest area.
Chest area, his head will be here, body will be here.
Now, if the chest area is there and our horse is side two, a curving line for the spinal
column, another curving line for the rib cage area, you see how all the lines curve?
And notice, too, that I'm using just rough sketching here, the hind quarter, bring it
down here, try to get the proportion correctly.
So we have a round circle here, an oval here, and almost a round circle there.
Balance, balance of the animal in this case would mean that we want to put a leg here
and another leg here.
These would be the forelegs, front legs, and then this one, balancing the animal again
down to knee, knee, knee, and leg possibly down this way, three legs.
The fourth might come into this area and support the weight of the body here.
So we've got one, two, three, four platforms balancing the animal.
The spinal column coming forward would arch up in this manner, perhaps, and then thinking
of muscle over the horse, over his shoulder, down the spine, and over the rear quarter.
And here, perhaps a bow to the neck, down to the shoulder.
Now we're structuring this animal as though we're building the skeleton underneath.
Here, look, another curving line, which would be the jaw area of our horse, jaw, jaw.
And we'll make a straight line down here, almost straight, just to guide us for the
curving lines that will become his jaw, under jaw, and then curving lines for two ears.
He's coming along.
Let's work down here now and establish that knee down to the fetlock and ankle of this
front foreleg, front meaning the one nearest us.
And of course, a hoof planted firmly on the ground, the other leg nearby, and the other
hoof, just beyond here, under the stomach, down, delineate, or show the leg in the background
with a little dark, the leg in the background with a little dark, down here, again, making
sure that our lines curve to show the animal's body shape.
The other hoof, back here, again, down, how about this proportion?
I think probably cut the quarter a little bit, down to the large muscles leading down
to the rear, knee, joint, forward, and the other hoof, one, two, three, four, supporting
the animal.
That leg should be straightened out just a little bit.
So if we bring this line back up over the haunch down here, we follow through with a
guide for the tail.
We'll have the tail come in here and then curving lines showing perhaps flicking of
the tail, a little wind blowing there, just for proportion's sake.
And as I said, we're just laying out our horse here.
He's looking that way just a little bit, so we need a little shadow there.
Draw in the ear.
And then because we got the tail in, we'll have a little forelock whirled by the wind
and maybe see a little of the mane on the other side of the animal here.
And then with the side of a crayon, we can add just a little bit of shade to show third
dimension, light source coming down, and perhaps an indication of the muscular structure of
the horse.
Hiding, you'll see the rib lines with just a little shadow coming down this way.
And then to set him off, the docks where we want them here on the face, down here, lines,
and then a little bit of shadow.
Anyway, I get carried away but showing you curving lines, the value of curving lines
and our horse.
I've chosen as the subject we can draw together a bird in flight.
Now here's one, a bobwhite or quail.
This is the male, eight to 10 inches long, and the little fellow that sounds like this.
These lovable chunky birds become quite tame and many times feed near houses.
They're young or the size of walnuts, if you can believe it, when they're hatched.
But notice those curving lines, even as feathers, circles, and curves.
Another beauty is the pheasant.
I've drawn two here, a pear, a cock, and a hen.
The female is duller in body tones as protection from enemies.
The male with his brilliant plumage attracts the attention of a would-be hunter and flies
off with a whirring of wings, like that.
Now sometimes you can hear a cock pheasant crow sounds something like this.
These great birds live in North and Central America, but originally they came from Asia.
Curving lines used here too.
Now in flight, a pheasant is a wonderful subject.
There he goes, and we can see his outstretched wings here set in a gliding position with
his long tail fanned out for proper rudder control.
Curving lines done with a marker and later colors set in with crayons.
This pose will make a fine selection for our drawing.
Will you try it with me?
I'll guide you along.
I'll remove our horse and get set for our drawing of the pheasant.
I'll use a pencil for layout, and then a marker, and then crayons.
Now use the same if you have them, or if not, an ordinary soft pencil will do fine.
And I'll show you as we go along.
Here on our paper, if you have one about this proportion, let's start our pheasant by drawing
an egg.
That's right, pheasants, birds, come from eggs, don't they?
I'm doing this lightly, but I'll keep it up until you can see it at home.
Can you see that egg?
Just lightly in pencil.
Now our backbone of our bird would be about here.
Remember how we drew the horse, curving lines, backbone coming out here and going up in this
fashion to our pheasant's head.
Now think of proportions, too.
Notice the size of the egg?
This is almost the same, isn't it?
Almost the same.
So, draw that curving line here, coming down to our egg.
Look at my drawing, look at yours.
Here, where we came up to this point, look what we can do here.
Make another curving line, which will be an oval, won't it?
Almost like the egg.
In other words, a large egg, a small egg, if you want to think of it that way.
And as you come around for this egg, think of the bottom of the bird's throat coming
down to join the chest area, breast of the bird, like that.
Good.
Now, you can almost see it now, can't you?
The pheasant's body, his neck, and his head.
Now we're looking sort of down at this bird, so if you'll draw a guideline, another curving
line there, and then accent this one here too, we'll have what's called the root of
the wings.
Now, remember, the pheasant doesn't have wings that are too long, but the first curving line
here will be the leading edge of the left and the right wing, there and there.
Again, to review, the egg, the small egg, the neck, guidelines for the root of the wings
and the start of the left leading edge, start of the right leading edge.
And here's something to think of too.
This line is longer than this line for two reasons.
It's behind the body and it also is shorter because of perspective, which we'll study
later on.
Now watch, small curving line.
Watch me first on this one, small curving line, small curving line, and then back to
that area.
It looks like a tiny wing, but you'll see as we build, all right, there, there, and
there.
Are you following along at home?
Good.
Now, we've got to duplicate this over here, curving line, right, opposite, curving line,
and then back.
And notice how much shorter it is?
Because we're looking off into that distance for his right wing.
These are the secondary feathers, secondary.
Now watch, here, another area coming out from that same curve, coming back this way and
going back this way.
Not to the end of the egg, about midstream, little aft of midstream, aft meaning to the
rear.
That's a nautical term.
Okay, here, the same, duplicating, and back.
Still very short wings for the size of our bird, right?
Back again now, left wing, right wing.
Have you ever done this before?
Never?
Well, you're doing it now.
Here, look.
Another area.
Now this will be an area only, so I'm going to do it very lightly.
See that portion there?
Back again, and up again.
Three layers of feathers, primary, secondary, primary, secondary, tissue-y.
How about that?
Now, this area must be duplicated over here, again, over, and back, and down.
We have the layout of the wing, and we're going to have a beautiful pheasant mark my
word before we're through.
I'm going to do one little area here that will be part of a brilliant part of the bird's
plumage, a part of a part.
Good?
Let's go back here with a curving line, and watch my pencil.
And here, I'm going to draw that.
For this is a ring-necked pheasant, you see, ring-necked, a ring around his neck, much
like a mallard duck.
Ring-necked pheasant is an oriental bird coming from China to our area in the United States,
and now is a very common bird all over our country.
Here, look, can you see that little curve?
Again, with pencil, this portion, that's right, and here, what's that?
An ear?
Look closely.
It seems to be an ear, doesn't it?
Actually it's feathers, and there's one on each side of our ring-necked pheasant's head.
Tiny little feathers.
They look like horns or ears.
Good.
Now, again, you see this throat line, come up here, and go about that far, in front of
the eye patch, and then curve that back.
That would be our bird's lower bill, for as he takes off, he opens his beak and goes, oh,
oh!
Right?
There, the beak open, there, and there, our cuck pheasant, the male, brilliant plumage.
At this point, draw a circle.
That's it, with the pencil, a circle right there, and then a little point for an aft.
That will be the area for his eye.
Again, we're laying him out with pencil alone.
Well, later, look here, see how the body follows through at this point?
Well, right in this area, outline that wing, so we can see here, watch, watch, see those
two flowing quick lines?
Those are going to be tiny, thin, fanned out feathers, and that is not all of his tail,
not by a long shot.
The tail now follows the spinal column, tail, I said tail, and I went to the head.
That probably confused you.
The tail starts here, in effect, in an artist's drawing.
We follow this line down, right through the center of his body, and then we take that
line down here, curving, curving, curving, to about that point.
Yes, the pheasant's tail is that long in proportion to his body.
That's just the center line.
Here, a large feather fanning down to the tip, shown on both the left and the right.
You'll notice, too, sketching, curving, graceful lines, if you can make them.
Here, following through with more, edging down to that pointed tail on this side, just
little guidelines, and over here, shorter ones, being on the other side of his tail,
to that point.
Now, look at my drawing.
Look at your drawing.
Check proportions.
So far, we've used just the pencil, and we'll keep it up, too.
I'm going to try, at this point, to show particular detail of feathers.
And instead of starting here, I'm going to start in this second tertiary group.
See that?
Look.
Now, we can sketch individual feathers, but remember, the feathers will not all be slanted
that way, for as we proceed, these feathers turn and trace the trailing edge of the wing.
Just little lines, little guidelines to set them up for us.
You see how they go?
Beginning to build the detail that we want.
Let's go over to the other side here, and do the same.
We can start from this direction, facing the rear.
Remember, they'll be a little bit smaller because of distance.
Earlier here, smaller there, our eye is traveling off into the distance here, and now they start
to point toward the tip of the wing.
There.
Building them.
It's like shingling a house, isn't it?
Almost.
Now, in this area of the body, watch what we can do here.
See those curving guidelines?
Naturally, smaller feathers on the body, almost like the scales on a fish overlapping, coming
in down to this area.
Watch now.
I go all the way down here.
I'll wait for you.
There.
All the way down.
Now we have the central part of the back of the body and the chest area covered with those
feathers.
And at that point, we can now start detail of the outer feathers of the wing.
And these will be separated like my fingers.
You see this wing right here?
There.
Now, when the pheasant flies, the feathers open.
You see that?
Instead of being closed, they'll open.
Let's come back here and find out exactly what I mean.
This first one will be a short one.
See it?
There.
Open from this point.
The next one, a little longer.
But see how the point opens?
That's it.
Now, curve it to that point.
And remember, we're going to not only draw these out here, open, but we're going to close
them as we move into this area of the wing.
Open, closed.
Here.
The next one.
But starting to point back.
The way this feather is should be the way the next one is.
There.
Open.
That's what makes the whirring sound when the pheasant flies.
The air is beat by those feathers, beaten by them.
Here.
Another one.
But they're coming closer together now, and they're changing their direction, aren't they?
All right.
Here.
Now.
Just showing those curving lines.
Curving lines.
Remember I told you you didn't have to draw straight lines to be an artist?
No.
Here.
There.
Detail.
Let's go over here.
You ready for it?
Oh, you're still working here.
All right.
Let's get that done.
There.
While you're doing that, I'm going to use an eraser while you're doing that.
I'm just going to erase those body lines there.
You don't have to, because we'll have color in our drawing before we're through.
Just that little eraser does it.
All right.
Now, I think you're ready.
Let's go over here.
We'll work in the opposite direction.
Pointing.
And now, starting to separate, same as on this side.
All right?
There's one.
Next one, separated.
There it is, the automatic opening for it, the whirring of the pheasant's wings.
And don't forget that that leading outer feather is shorter, shorter, shorter.
Now let's pause for just a moment and refresh your memory on our sketch, the preparation
we saw, our pheasant, as we're drawing him here with color.
There he is.
And notice the color of the head and the red around the eye and the greenish head and the
white neck.
That is the ring.
And then the brown feathers all the way through, different grades of brown and yellows.
Green again, orange near the tail, the yellow tail with the black bars in it.
Right?
And that's our pheasant flying.
I've also done a thumbnail of our bird in corn.
These birds dearly love corn.
Each springtime, the cock pheasants establish defended territories and they have several
lady friends too.
Young chicks grow quickly and can usually fly in two or three weeks.
Pheasants, handsome birds.
All right.
Now on with our drawing.
Here we go.
We have, as you know, our bird is established right where we want him and we've got a lot
of detail in the wings and the head and we're coming down now to the aft portion of the
tail.
Take your pencil and draw this center line quite heavily.
If you're using a pencil, crayon, whatever, as we said.
Now when you have that line drawn, let's take this outside feather line and increase the
detail on that with heavy strokes right there.
The same on this side, remembering that these are the other side of the tail.
Now right here, instead of using the pencil, I'm going to use a regular black crayon and
I'm going to start by drawing a little line there.
Can you see that?
You can see it show up now because we're really using black.
One on each side, like a little upside down chevron, a little narrow V. You see that?
There's the V and we're turning it over and putting it there.
Right next to it, on the other side now, do the same and another one.
Now something's going to happen.
They're going to get a little longer, all right?
You don't have to count them.
There's no specific number on each pheasant's tail, but just leave a gap between the two.
See these are a little narrower here and a little wider there, narrower, wider.
That's it.
Work right in close to it.
Look closely at my drawing and then yours.
See the proportion, the way they're coming, the detail of it popping right out from the
paper, making it more live now, right?
Live.
There.
The next one, a little larger.
Now that you've got the hang of it, we can go a little faster.
There, there.
They're going all the way down to about this point in the tail too, there.
The design of the tail.
When the pheasant's tail is closed, that is not flying, you can see them, but you'd only
see half.
On one side of the tail as he struts along through the cornfield, down to that point.
Now when we get to this point, they become almost just little dots, you see?
So they start here, tape a large and then down.
Got it?
Good.
Right like that.
Good.
Take a close look at mine now and then yours.
Fine.
Again, with a black crayon, and you want to be sure that the point is as sharp as you
can make it now.
You can rub it on a piece of rough paper or a waste paper or you can use a knife very
carefully to get it down to a point.
Here I'm going to start a little accent line in here.
See that?
And there.
Just to make these feathers now stand out and watch, they're going to back up.
They're going to go right up there to that point.
See like a little, oh, a little overcoat flap there.
Good.
And then over here, the same, shorter lines, right?
You know the reason, the other side of the tail, there.
Now here, see this little patch that we left?
Remember how the small feathers came down to there?
Let's just give a little detail of outline there.
Again with a black crayon, for this is, let's draw, you know.
We're not painting.
We're drawing.
There's a big difference, isn't there?
To be able to draw, to be able to reproduce what you see in line and then color later.
Let's draw.
All right, now here on this part of our great body of the bird, come down to this point
and then watch, little dotted lines.
You see it becomes strong here and then weaker there when it comes into the feather area.
Up over the arching head, down here to the neck, again outlined.
We're trying to bring as much detail as we can into our shape of our bird, down to the
little nose piece.
See it?
Then here, over that little feather that looks like an ear and back again.
I'm using the black crayon.
You can use your pencil to do exactly the same thing, just bear on a little harder.
I'm going to start now under the beak, the way we outlined it in pencil.
Down around the head and then arch the neck in a nice curve to that leading edge of the
wing.
Good.
Got it?
Here, right about this point, the area for the red that will be on our bird's, the side
of his face and then outline the eye and hit that beak the way it ripples back.
If you're looking really closely, you can see a little tongue.
See it?
Oh, oh!
There it is.
Good.
Now, right here, look, a couple of little rough lines showing where the feathers lead
into the others and then we can take that sweep out to the leading edge of that wing.
Over on this side, we wouldn't see this.
It's in back of the body, but we would see the arching line, wouldn't we?
There, leading edge again.
We've laid it out in pencil and now we're accenting the lines we want with heavier laying
on of lead, as in the case of a pencil, or crayon in the case of a crayon.
Good.
Now, here, we can be very rough in setting up what will come in as color and line.
See those little lines going along there?
Just little guidelines.
If we drew that very heavily now, we'd have really too heavy a line separating our feathers,
so we indicate by drawing just that, the indication of it, over here, the same.
Just up and out.
You see?
That's it.
Good.
Now, strangely enough, to get really fine points here, I'm going to use the marker
and this will help us with our feathers.
I'm not going to put every feather in with the marker, I'm going to just put a leading
edge of it right now.
See that leading edge?
That feather coming down?
Next leading edge.
This accents our feathers and just roughly get some of the others in there.
Just the feeling of the feathers rather than detail now, because we are working toward
coloring our drawing.
If you have some colored crayons with you, we'll be all set.
If not, remember, the beauty of our Let's Draw series is you can always stop your tape.
Go back.
Wait.
Get some crayons if you need them.
Come back and start it again.
There.
And you see what I was doing when I was, I got carried away, didn't I?
Telling you about the beauty of our Let's Draw series and how you can work it and rework
it and I drew those feathers in very fast.
So I'll go back, you go ahead and get them in, just accenting with the black now points
to get separation of feathers.
Think of this.
Think of the feather as being ruffled by the wind as the bird flies, some of them lifting,
some of them fluttering, and you will have the feeling of it.
Alright?
Good.
Now with the black marker, we can actually see the separation of those fine feathers
in the tail area, the fine feathers.
And also, start there and let it taper down.
Start and let it taper down.
Good.
Over to this wing.
Same thing.
Remember that short leading feather, leading flying wing feather.
The feeling of it now, just think of the bird flying, think of those feathers rustling.
There it is, getting it in just the way we want it.
Now our bird is pretty well shaped up as far as outline goes.
We can, however, come in here and just give a little outline of that ring neck, but notice
that I didn't take it from the top, I took it from the side, I should have told you that.
Let's make believe he's flying in direct sunlight.
The light will be on the top of the bird, therefore shadow will be below the bird.
To accent that, if I thicken that line, you'll see what I mean.
The body would be round and tapering over, even without going ahead with our color and
tone and texture for the time being.
Now with this point, I'm going to put in the pupil of the eye, all right?
The pupil of the eye, here.
You will look forward, and if you can see it very closely, you'll see I leave a tiny
little highlight.
You see the pupil is looking forward.
The bird is looking forward to where he's going, so you would see the white of the eye
and back, there.
And while we're here, over the front of the nose is the little nostril area, and we can
make fine lines there separating this red area, which will be red soon from the beak,
which will be a yellowish color, of course.
Now let's see where we are with our whole bird, and we'll look at proportions.
You check my drawing, look at mine, look at yours, and see the detail.
We're almost ready now for color.
I think right in here, I could use that marker to delineate this wing from the body.
Little dotted lines, just floating along like that.
And then right here, at the lower part of the body, going over some of those pencil
lines to give me rounding depth of black that we will go over with regular wax crayon in
a moment.
You see that?
That starts to round our body with line, drawing again.
By the same token, down here, after the wing, we can see the same.
Now pheasants, like most birds, most birds, some do not, have retractable landing gear.
That's right.
Their legs fold up, don't they?
Streamlining the way landing gear on some aircraft fold up, and the pheasants fold right
into that area, their body, their little claws fold right up, and they tuck them up under
it, going in that direction, of course.
But you can show an indication of the leg tucked up.
When they first take off, the leg is below, and then they fold it up as they gain altitude,
and off they go with the whirring of wings.
Brrrrum, again.
There he is.
Now, you see this patch?
Here.
Can you put some fine pencil lines, and marker lines, or crayon lines in that?
Again, fanning out.
That's it.
Remember, too, that these are the feathers that we will see, much like the body feathers.
But I'm going to put those in just to show you where they're going right now.
You don't have to do that.
As we color it, we'll see the whole thing.
There is the shape of our bird, and our next step will be color.
How are you coming along?
Your pheasant is as good as mine?
I'll bet better, because it's yours.
But remember, you can always rewind and start again.
Now, before we finish up our pheasant, look at a few other subjects, other animal subjects
I've already drawn, paying particular attention to those easy-to-use curving lines.
Do you know this rascal?
This is the mischievous little bandit of the forest, the raccoon.
That's right.
Black mask and ring tail quickly identify this little guy.
They nest in hollow trees, if they're available, and have three to six young each spring.
Those babies stay in the den for two months and remain with mom and dad until the next
spring.
Lucky animals.
Raccoons will wash their food if water is handy.
Again, see those curved lines?
Now, how about these swift creatures, the pointed, streamlined mako or mackerel sharks?
Here I've pictured two of them hunting.
They have wicked curved teeth and can swim rapidly after fish, which are their favorite
food.
These sharks live off both coasts of America, down to and including the tropics.
They grow to 12 feet long and weigh up to 1,000 pounds.
Incidentally, the name shark comes from an old German word, the German language, meaning
skoundrel.
I think it's pronounced zhark, meaning scoundrel.
Now here's another much older animal.
This one is, of course, a dinosaur, an ancient lizard, the giant brachiosaurus, the heaviest
of all the discovered dinosaurs.
Science says he lived about 200 million years ago and was thought to be a gentle vegetarian.
Cats are graceful animals and make great subjects.
I've drawn one here using crayons, and she's a beauty, again, curves.
A handsome animal, wouldn't you agree?
Look at the curving lines here and the stripes, a beautiful face on this little animal.
Did you know that cats walk on tiptoe?
Yes, they do, and they have retractable claws, of course.
When you pick one up and he's purring, he's gentle.
Watch out when his tail thrashes.
Incidentally, have you watched a cat's eye change as the light changes?
When you first look at the cat, his pupil may be wide open, round, like that, admitting
a lot of light.
But as the light increases, the cat's eye turns to a vertical slit, shutting out that
light.
The cat doesn't do this on purpose, nature does it.
Interesting.
Now back to our drawing, and we'll finish it up too.
You ready?
Okay, color and crayons.
Now our pheasant has a red patch around the eye.
I'm going to hit that first.
I'm using just an ordinary red wax crayon, and you'll notice that I'm working in front
of the pupil, down and around.
I'm working in front of the pupil and down and around, and finish that whole red patch.
And now a green crayon will get to the head.
Here we are, just above that red patch.
Remember now I said that light would come from the top.
Therefore, we'll start the green here, near the top of that red patch, hit the little
ear area, but allow this to taper off.
Dark green here, you see, there, and then dark green at the little tuft of feathers.
That's it.
Right under the throat, this area will be green, not down here, this area.
Right under the throat, right next to the red patch, we'll start that green.
But watch what happens now, as we come up here, I'll taper it.
I gently lift the crayon from the paper so that we have dark below tapering to the light.
There.
Let me do a little thing here with a piece of chalk that will show you exactly what I
mean.
I have a bluish paper here, just a light blue paper, so you can see the little highlight
that I put on there.
See that white show up?
A little touch on the beak, there, good.
But fundamentally, the red and then the green.
Now we have the headset.
This is white, therefore I can, if you have white paper, you don't have to do that, do
you?
I'll put a little white in.
There it is for the neck.
See here, and here, good, the head, and that little white band.
Now do you have a tannish crayon, probably about like that, tannish, and we'll go to
the body.
Here, remember where we drew these feathers and I said the color would go over them?
All right, dark again because it's light, light is coming, and our bird is beginning,
if you look now, beginning to look round, isn't it?
Yes, you see, you can take a flat piece of paper and make it have three-dimension quality
by shadow and source of light.
Here, next to the wing root, dark, but allowing it to taper up off the edge of those feathers,
just light there and then down again to dark and up to light.
So it's back and forth, back and forth with the crayon to lay in the tone and the feeling
of light and shade on the bird, right?
Now here, you see the green we used on the head?
That's green too.
So you use the green crayon and here at the feather area, back and forth, back and forth
and lay that green in, sort of an iridescent green if you think of it, dark below, light
above.
Look, green, red, white, brown, green again.
Now see these feathers, we're working on the body, not touching the wings as yet.
These feathers right in here are sort of an orange color, a little more orange than these.
If you want to use tan, fine.
I'm going to use these and I'm going to come down here and show them as individual feathers
in some areas, leaving the light showing between, you see that?
There, just to there, up in here at the root of the tail, a little more orange, then over
here, light is coming, so just the touch of them.
See the touch of them there?
That's the way, up in there, a little more feeling of that brilliant color right there.
You'd see that flash of brilliant color as the pheasant flies away from you.
Now the tail itself, here, and this is sort of a yellow, do you have a yellow crayon?
Here, between the black, yellow.
Now if your crayon or your pencil will go over the black without smudging, go ahead
and use that, but this is a very light yellow I'm using and I'm putting it between each
one of those bars.
When I get here, a little on the edge, between the bar, a little on the edge, between the
bar, a little on the edge.
Look at my drawing, see what I'm doing, look at yours and bring it right down to the tip.
We go there, then come back, yellow on this side.
Remember that source of light again, don't get too yellow on this top, the light is flashing
off of his feathers as he takes off and flies beyond the corn field.
There, now we have the head, the red, the green, the white, the brown, the green, the
orange, the yellow, but the beak itself should be repeated with a little yellow here.
The same as on the tail, same as way down there, right in this area, the lower beak,
the top beak, and just a touch of the eye, right there, just a touch, the lower part
of that white as it's showing.
Now there's our bird, you can almost see him flying.
Again now, remember the tan color we used here, well we're ready for the wing.
I'm going to start the wing root here and I'm going to go back and forth the way the
feathers are formed.
If I went this way, it wouldn't look as well as if I go this way, and so in the direction
of the feathers, I produce the direction of, whoops, there goes a crayon, of the crayon
lines.
You see, fanning, that's called, fanning in the direction that the feathers grow.
And then we can drop over here and do the same, here, much shorter, you see how much
shorter it is because we're looking beyond.
Most folks don't take into consideration when they're drawing foreshortening or perspective
and we'll cover all of that in later lessons as we proceed in our let's draw course.
Now we've got these feathers set and the next, I'll use the same crayon, but look now, almost
individually.
You see, that was the value of drawing in pencil those feathers separately as we went
along.
In other words, what I am doing here is pre-drawing and then coloring over the drawing.
That makes it more accurate.
You see, if we just did all crayon work and then tried to draw over it, we wouldn't have
it half as well done, would we?
Now here, very lightly, I just want to change this to a light tan color off the paper and
the reason for that is we've got some more blacks and details to do after I get these
feathers in.
But I'll do it on both wings and then we'll come back for detail here.
You see those now?
Our pheasant is beginning to really pop from the paper here under this part of the body
up under the feathers, the same brown here, see, dark under the body there separating
the wing from the body by color and also by shadow.
Now our bird is really popping, but we want to go over these wings, this wing, I mean,
these feathers.
You see these?
Up here, individually again, within the area that we drew.
Let's draw again these feathers here.
See the way it's coming?
Filling right in.
If you have pencil lines or guidelines that you want to erase after you've got your drawing
and you're very happy with the drawing, feel free to do it.
Just erase all those little guidelines and your drawing will maybe look even better.
Now fundamentally, all our colors are in.
We can pop it through with more, but right now I'm going to use a marker.
You can use your pencil, whatever you want, and look at the detail on these last outer
feathers of the wing.
Here the pheasant has little indicated spots.
You see how that will pop our feather up?
Just using the little edge of the marker, you can do it with pencil, just as I said,
but here on each, you know, a feather is made up of thousands and thousands of little feathers.
Actually, that's true.
And so we can use the point of the marker to get the center of the feather and then
the detail on the side.
Only these outer feathers are spotted that way.
It helps in camouflage, you know, nature's way of hiding and protecting its animals.
It would look, if the pheasant was hiding in the grass, these would look like little
spots of weed, and so he could stay there undiscovered.
Over to the other set, over here, now these will be much smaller, won't they?
Why?
Because of depth and perspective and proportion and balance, all of the things that we'll
learn with little spots.
Now to pop our drawing out, I'm going to use the black to accent.
Watch the drawing pop.
After we've drawn, if we just accent certain points, not a continual line, certain points,
you will see the drawing pop into life.
See that?
See it pop?
The feathers themselves standing out now from the background?
Just here and there.
Skip the feathers, come into the bottom of the body, put some shadow under that tail
plumage right in here as we were doing.
Catch these little feathers, the detail of them.
Bring a few down here.
Remember, as I said now, the feathers are in orderly fashion, like the scales on a fish.
They run in patterns vertically to the body, in other words, this way.
So we wouldn't want to just haphazardly put those in if you're trying to get fine detail.
Remember it's like the shingles on a house, or as I said, the scales on a fish.
Here on the other side, the same, show a few little feathers in orderly fashion.
Here on this other side of the wing, come over here and do the same.
Now, if you start from the rear and head them forward like that, it makes a little more
sense to me, you see, in that fashion.
Just the idea of them and a few little dotted lines.
Your imagination and your eye and your mind work together to make your drawing, as I say,
pop away from the paper.
I think we can give a little more detail to this head.
I'm going to do it with a marker to show those little feathered horns, and then slightly
around the edge of the marking of that red wattle area and sharpen up the beak.
He's coming in fine now.
Let's look at the whole bird.
I think perhaps a little more snapping up of the tail and that area.
And also right here, look, between those feathers and the rear feathers.
Now we're looking at our bird here, we need a little more sharpness.
Those feathers are a little indistinct, the whole quality of our drawing.
So we'll snap those up.
I think I'll point these a little more at this end.
You see, this is, the part of the bird that is closest to us would be the sharpest, and
it would be right in this area, that wing heading toward us.
The body's farther away, that wing, of course, in the distance.
And so the detail on this wing for the mind's eye would be very important to make it snap.
There.
Now, the bird is just about there, but I think I'll use the brown crayon to do this.
Remember how I said they were in their feels and corn feathers?
Well, as he goes away from the ground, perhaps the grasses would turn with his wing.
We can also think of balance in our picture and have the direction of our eye go in the
direction that the bird is flying.
If these pieces of grass were all heading in that direction, it wouldn't make such a
nice piece of artwork, would it?
You can see that.
And so you lead it like arrows pointing to the direction that your eye would travel.
Those are browns, and these are a few little yellows in this area to give us the feeling
of dried grasses.
And as I say, the foreground can be accented, too, with a few little blacks over the browns
and the yellows of the field of weeds.
Now, you know what you can do to enhance your drawing?
Any drawing that you have, you can put in the background in suggested line.
Because we're drawing, what do you suppose that line will be?
Well, it's the edge of a field, and there's a fence.
See it?
It's small, because we don't want to interfere with our drawing.
Off at this edge, watch now, a farmhouse and a gambled roof barn with a silo there and
a cupola just on the side, and here, continue, and let the other side of the wing come up
with a hill or mountain going down into the background.
And here, an area of perhaps large maple trees.
With a blue crayon, blue, you can just give the idea of some sky.
Perhaps a nice fall day, while the leaves are still there, so late summer, and just
swing the sky in with long sweeping blues, of course, in back of the bird.
There, just the idea of it.
And way off here, some crows lifting up from behind the woods.
There is our pheasant, and there is our foreground, and there is our drawing, and we have it,
our own ring neck pheasant.
I hope yours came out just fine, and you realize how easy it is, really, to draw.
You know, the next time you have an opportunity, look at some famous paintings, books, reproductions
of paintings by famous artists, and you will see the value of what we've done here, curved
lines.
And remember, you can try this session over and over again any time you want to practice.
It's good to practice any time you want, any time it's convenient.
Now our art at home sessions are all designed to turn you into an artist, and they're at
your store now.
You'll be meeting all those different subjects, too, such as the animals of many kinds, perhaps
ships at sea and landscapes and, well, you name it.
We'll learn about light and shade and balance and perspective and how to use it for better
drawings, many hints for making your work better.
Would you keep it up for us?
Good.
Your sketches will improve as you go with us.
I hope you'll try another subject soon.
Until we meet at the drawing board, please be careful.
Thank you.
Thank you very much for joining us, and we'll see you next time.
Good luck.