Early in Shoreline

1/28/15 India and Platinum Carbon inks, twig, watercolor,
Canson XL 140 lb. paper

In Shoreline early this morning to drop something off at a client’s office, I saw that a faint hint of peachy-pink still tinted the clouds. I quickly chose a tree to silhouette against that sublime sky.

This may be one of my favorite chopped-tree-with-power-lines sketches due mainly to that bird that appeared briefly on the wire. Usually if I sketch a distant bird, I make the mistake of showing it in profile, inevitably making the beak disproportionately large. With a blunt twig in my hand, I knew I wouldn’t be able to make a fine enough mark to draw the beak, so with quick stroke, I sketched it from the back instead.