Drawing with pastel (10) – Blue tit!

After spending quite a while dealing with my doubt about drawing, it’s time to start a new one. In pastel pencil, on white pastelmat paper. The reference I choose for this drawing, is one of the photo’s made by fellow blogger Willie. A very cute little blue titmouse, on a twig with alder cones.

I start drawing a rough outline, so I can do the background first. I’m still not sure what is the best medium to use… so to be safe, I use different colours of pastel pencil. I hope this way I can cover up the outlines later…

Then I start with the dark panpastels for the background. I also put down some light colours, there’s quite some difference between the lights and darks in the blurry background. With the lighter pans, I draw a few circles, to create a slight bokeh effect.

Then, the cones. I’ve never done anything like this before, and I don’t know how much detail I should try to put in. Everything is quite small and the reference is a bit blurry towards the edges. First I put in a bit of pan, then I fill in several layers of pastel pencil. I have to sharpen the pastel pencils to draw the contrast on the edges of the cone scales, which is a challenge itself. I have tried various sharpeners, but after sharpening a few pastel pencils each one of them turns blunt! So the only thing left to use is a piece of sandpaper…

This takes more time than I expected. There are so many colours in the cones, and all the details in the twig and tiny baby cones!

In the meantime, I cannot resist adding a few touches of colour on the bird. When I am halfway, I realise that I have to do at least the bird’s feet, since it is sitting on the cones I am about to draw. I sharpen some pencils again, for the details of the tiny feet. But… I think I have overdone it this time. The feet seem to have a different depth, as if they are not resting on the cones… It is really hard to get the same combination of blurriness and sharpness as on the reference.

And then more cones. And more cones. They all seem different, different colours, different shapes and shades on the scales, I am using a lot more pencils than I thought I would. The white I use on top of the cones – suggesting a bit of frost – isn’t as bright as I hoped. I still haven’t figured out how people get these bright whites in their drawings.

Finally, I get to the real subject: the little blue tit. It’s so small I can’t even distinguish feathers, it looks like hair. A slight purple glow on the head for the light reflections. The belly is much darker than I thought, so I need dark green and blue, purple and brown. The tail is a bit blurry, so that needs a bit of grey on the edges. Just tiny lines to implicate wing feathers. I have to take off my glasses to draw the tiny eye and the reflection in and around it!

I put a little more dark around the feet, to have them a bit more grounded. There are no real shadows on the ref, so I need my imagination here.

The reference photo is very, very cute – that’s why I fell for it – but it turned out to be quite difficult to reach the right level of detail, when everything in the drawing is so small. I think I need a lot bigger canvas next time… 😉

* Reference photo by Willie Doorn-Meijne. Thanks!