trying my new pastels

by drawing a Goshawk

I bought a set of soft Unison pastels from Cornelissen which have some colours I wouldn’t normally choose: it’s called a Drawing Set, and the hues just sort of spoke to me. When I was doing my drawing course back in 2015, I always loved the classic chalk, sanguine, sepia, charcoal combination but I’m a bit tired of using it. I do also love grey, indigo, black but I’ve never thought to pair those colours so this palette really appealed to me.

I was wondering what to draw and my mum had given me some magazines from various wildlife charities, and it’s nice to work from a photo reference that isn’t on a screen. This dry weather and having fans blowing all the time coupled with staring at a screen with the Birds of the A.T. has made my eyes uncomfortably itchy. There’s apparently also been a lot of Saharan dust and wildfire smoke in the atmosphere which hasn’t helped so suffice to say, I was pleased to have a large sheet to work on in the shady and sheltered part of the garden and to leave my iPad and laptop inside.

I chose a Goshawk from one of last year’s Broadleaf magazines from the Woodland Trust as I thought the colours and style would work with my pastels. I’ve never quite identified what I want to achieve, stylistically, with pastels but I really enjoyed drawing Wilbur with the oil pastels so decided to go for something loose and gestural. I was working on a piece of A1 cartridge paper clipped onto a large sheet of corrugated cardboard so I was getting a lot of texture on there.

It was really fun to do and I like the energy I managed to create. The pastels were a delight to use, so soft and pigmented. I love the buttery yellow, which you can’t really see as I used it to sketch a vague outline, but it’s paler than the ochre I used on the underwings and tail coverts. I used all of the colours – although only the beak and talons with the black – and I like how they look together.

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I filmed a short video here if you want to see me in action. You can also hear planes overhead and Ned banging his tail against the garden furniture. Keeping it real here at Wayward Bird HQ…