Inktober 52 - 2021 25

The subject of this prompt was decided fairly quickly upon. Birds often seem aesthetically pleasing to me. There's something about the assemblage of wings and the geometry of feathers that catches the eye. I don't have a favourite bird, I don't nearly know enough of them and was never a bird owner. I tend to like a good number of the larger ones, and cranes come to mind every now and then, since there are a fair few of them strewn around my desk. Origami facsimiles made with little attention paid to the process. Cranes also have a particular anatomy that makes it easy to fill a page, so there went my concept.

I did have to use references for this. I found a beautiful picture and changed a few details I thought would add a little more balance to the composition. It's really mainly the anatomically incorrect tail feathers, but hey, I won't tell if you won't. The process here was relatively straight forward. The sketch was done in about 20 minutes. I wasn't looking forward to inking the feathers, and since my marker is starting to run out of ink, inking the background would also be less fun, I suppose.

Line art done, with little to report on. I lengthened the tail-feathers and discovered that today was a bad day for straight lines, as seen in several places, where what should have been straight lines become kinda fuzzy. I'll have to go between the feathers with the fineliner to do the background, so that's probably going to take some time.

Yeah, I need a new marker. This one was running dry after five minutes of usage, after which I had to put it on my laptop dock to warm it up, hoping that the ink would become liquid again. It had moderate success, but it does feel very different, and at this point my frustrated scratching at the same spots is starting to cost significant time. I guess I'll check in some local shops for one, though empirically that doesn't usually bear fruit. All in all, I like how this turned out. The crane's pose does have a slight upset-chicken-ish air to it, but I think that's just how birds look, when they're breaking. I could imagine using some color highlights for stuff like this in the future, so maybe I'll check for some coloured markers, while I'm at it. Who knows, they might be cheaper as a set...?

Words are difficult this week, so I'll leave it at the shortest poetic form I personally care for. It's noticeably less work than the alternative, but still poignant when it needs to be ^-^

It is time to go

They feel it in their shoulders

Leaving but feathers