I spent several happy hours at a friend’s smallholding today, up a mountain, out in the fresh air and sunshine, shovelling horse manure! I also hung around while she fed her delightful pea fowl. Most of them are adults but there is one little chick. I’ve nicknamed her Princess Pea. The adults are huge; Princess Pea is about the size of a Sunday roast chicken. Her parents have elegant headresses but hers is like a stubby Mohican! It was great to have a chance to draw birds up close; for me it emphasises their dinosaur-like qualities. They’re not easy to draw though; like other birds, they don’t stop moving and speed sketching is unavoidable.
After a while they became very agitated and started making a strange sound that they use to warn of predators. I suppose that predators would stare at them like I do. I’ve found that dogs don’t like me drawing them either, probably because of the staring, but I’ve yet to find a cat that was bothered. Drawn into my Laura Ashley cloth-bound A5 sketchbook with a Faber Castell Drawing pen size S in sepia.
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I guess it was a lot of fun to watch these birds and sketch them. 🙂 Alone the fresh mountain air must have been so delicious.
It was lovely 🙂
My personal take on cats is that they never want you to know what they’re thinking. So while they might be bothered, they would never let on!
That’s very true lol
Princess Pea looks like a real character!!
She’s adorable 🙂
You have caught the essence of the birds even with the few lines. I also have a problem sketching my dog, she loves having her photo taken but if she sees me staring at her with my sketchbook she becomes very agitated and won’t lie/sit still – v strange.
Thank you. They’re so fidgety, they’re difficult to draw 🙂