Flights of the Cormorants

by Jim Corbett
(Seongnam City, S.Korea)

I originally did this for a challenge on drawspace.com using a reference photo. In the actual photo, there were more cormorants in the water so I decided to focus on a few that could illustrate various stages of flight.

To begin, I drew five ovals to represent the different cormorants. Then, I worked on each cormorant adding a round head, slightly curved neck, long bill, wings and tail feathers.

The wings, believe it or not, were difficult to draw because the height of them determines the stage of flight. The cormorant on the rocks, for example, is just flexing its wings in preparation for take off. This is why I included two small indicator lines. The bird in the top right, however, is as straight as an arrow.

Then, I drew the rocks. Again, the actual photo contained many more rocks so I selected only a few to provide the main idea. Also, the rocks made an excellent starting frame on the left side and since the cormorants are moving right, it gives the appearance of never ending space to fly.

Then, I crazily drew waves all over the page. I added a few waves beyond the rocks to show but most were concentrated parallel and in front of the rocks. I was also sure to place many waves directly around the rocks to give the impression of a rough shore.

Then, I focused on darkening the cormorants to make them stand out. I was careful not to conceal the eyes and bills completely. Then, I shaded medium tones around the rocks to show depth and contour. By adding lines around the edges of the rock, the depth is really clear.

Finally, I drew a couple of faint horizontal lines to represent the horizon and lightly shaded the top portion of the page to represent fog. This way, the division between the water and sky is clear yet, at the same time, part of the same landscape.

**Note from Kerry:

Hello Jim
Wow!! Thanks for a brilliant description of how you went about the drawing. That should help so many people and I am truly grateful to you for taking the time for such detail.