I'm not sure how you refine your sketch from a live model. I have some gesture drawings but once I am back at home I do not have that bird available. I assume you also take a photograph when you are in the field so you have a reference when you go to refine? Because even a lot of notes won't help me with shadows and tiny details unless I am one heck of a note taker.

It was very helpful to let me "watch over your shoulder" as you refined and hear your thought process. I'm still having a lot of trouble with shading as I tend to want to color in rather than draw lines close to one another.

A difficult technique for me is the proportion of the birds body. The most helpful has been to draw thin lines to see if it is ok and then go on with refining.

......getting true 3-d is tough. I can highlight, so show 2-d depth, but not really getting true 3-d, scientific illustration quality. Guess I am an impressionist. btw- both exercises, from up above, are on next page, on 1 sheet of paper. b.k. upside down parakeet, and a cardinal in x-,mas ivy.

These are my 3rd and 4th attempts to refine the gesture drawing of the marsh wren. I found that quickly drawing the outline by contour drawing helped get the overall shape, then used some hatching and sketchy lines to fill in and add some depth. I struggled with getting the bill shape, proportions and eye to look right, but repeated practice helped a bit, and using  negative space helped with positioning the bird on the reed. I would say that quick sketching is coming more easily at this point. I need more practice with shading and adding depth and accuracy in details. I am so happy with the confidence this course is giving me to sketch everything.

I can definitely see the drawing skills all coming together as I refine. I still have trouble with angles and proportions. I really like looking at negative space to see if I have things rightm

Getting the basics shapes and form is coming naturally. Filling in detail is hit or miss. I sometimes don't know if I take it too far or too little.

This refining was difficult for me. If it weren't for the negative space practice I would have been in big trouble. I decided to color it since I couldn't define the light from the dark on such a small scale. I'll keep trying.  I found that the upside down exercise was very helpful and surprisingly accurate. Kind of hard to do in the wild though. So I think it finally helped to get this bird to look like a small marsh wren which I think it might be because of its environment. I looked it up and confirmed that ID by the wide open mouth and its other markings. I'm so glad they sing or we would never find them.

I am more aware of negative space and looking at positioning of areas.

I can definitely see the progress I've made since the beginning of the course...not only in the sketches themselves but the speed and accuracy of the sketches has also improved.  So thankful to have returned after a brief hiatus and thankful for the content.

I did a new gesture drawing for this one, because the only semi-usable one from earlier lessons was the wren, but it wasn't very good. I think I'm progressing in all areas generally. I like the way the dove proportions came out, and I think my "eye" is being trained to see the details. The many wing feathers were hard, though.  I also did a goldeneye from a digiscoped photo using an iPad and Apple pencil. Interesting to compare the digital techniques, which are very similar and in the end very powerful. Looking forward to the watercolors!  

It took a lot of erasing and my page is messy. My gesture drawing had some proportion issues but it did have some good negative space and angle relationships to work from.  I continue to learn how negative spaces and relationships are so important for accuracy in drawing.

I spent some time refining the tree frog gesture drawing. Even though the original was just a bunch of scribbles, I was stoked to see it kind of captured this frog's "gesture". Anyway, I took some time and refined it using the proportion and negative space lessons a bunch. I wanted to do a before and after but I drew over the original gesture!

I revised the lizard picture from the timed gesture drawing exercise. I find that using proportions comes easily to me. But drawing negative space is still difficult. For example, I redrew that membrane that hangs down from the throat several times focusing on negative space and it is still not right. I also need to work more on breaking the object down into shapes; I think that would help me draw objects more quickly when I am observing live, moving animals.

I found this exercise to be somewhat of a turning point for me in this class because I came to realize that my 60 second gesture drawing was VERY useful in rendering the subject at a later time.  In the past, I may have considered quick sketches (more like scribbles!) as minimally useful and more of a "throw-away" drawing.  After doing this exercise I feel I can trust the gesture phase to be a foundation for further development, especially if I'm choosing from a series of gesture drawings.  Some of the other students commented that they felt they had captured something special in their gesture drawings (bring out some of the vibrancy, personality, even Life of their subject). I'm finding the "negative space" technique helps with critical portions of a drawing as does "seeing and drawing shapes" instead of say an "actual feather" (which is overwhelming in its detail!) gives me the confidence to keep working on the drawing.  One challenge I've found, that was almost comically apparent to me was that I put considerable detail into the head of this bird before moving on to the body and when I was approaching finishing, I realized I had the proportions wrong and the bird looked "off" to me.  But I really liked the head (especially area around and including eye) and didn't want to erase it.  For kicks, I opened the image in Photoshop and made the head bigger. YES! I was right about the proportions.  I left it as it was here, and in my notebook, wanting to archive the process and remember the lesson learned...they'll be plenty more bird drawings in my future! AND:  This subject didn't originally have a discussion section and I reached out to Liz to inquire if it could be added. Liz agreed it was a useful addition and quickly added the opportunity for us to share (so come on, SHARE!) Thank you Liz--your "live" presence makes this course Extra Special!