Drawing & Painting from Photo References: Focus on Birds

Drawing and Painting from Photo References: Focus on Birds

Drawing from life is often considered the ideal, but capturing ever changing landscapes and moving subjects—especially birds—can be incredibly challenging.

Sketching and painting from photo references could sharpen your life drawing and nature journaling practice and be a fun way to create art from your own photos.

Cameras can oversaturate, increase contrast and auto sharpen a color image; we will make our images our own by cropping, editing and recreating lost colors and atmosphere.

We will introduce some of our local birds and discuss their unique characteristics and anatomy. We will then explain some of the tools artists have used for centuries, such as Claude glass, comparator mirror, or camera lucida and then move on to transfer methods, including the grid, graphite transfer, and device apps. We'll touch on using watercolors, color mixing, and color matching.

You may use printed references or bring a tablet, phone, or laptop to practice the grid and graphite transfer method.

Materials Provided:

• Printed bird images and magazines
• 5" x 7" drawing paper
• Pencils & pens
• Rulers & straight edges
• Tracing paper
• Graphite paper
• Graphite pencils
• Drafting & Washi tape
• Watercolor supplies
• Watercolor paper
• Color Wheel

As always, please bring along your own favorite supplies if you have any!

Children above 14 must be accompanied by a guardian.

Taught by Monica Schroeder, scientific illustrator & kayaker
[email protected]

Medical & Scientific Illustration
Illustration Portfolio

Host or Publisher Friends of Bushwick Inlet Park