I’ve been toying with the idea of making an Auks poster, and I wanted to draw one bird per day in August, so an auk a day it is! Including the extinct Great Auk, they are a group of 25 species, so I should be able to complete the family in the month. I ended up starting early, drawing the four British species I’ve seen at Flamborough Head: Common Guillemot, Razorbill, Atlantic Puffin and Little Auk. I had never drawn a several species composition, trying to keep the proportions natural. This has allowed me to explore new features of my drawing software, like layer groups.
Today I completed the Great Auk, one of the last bird species to become extinct in Europe. I used the Guillemot for size reference, and I decided to leave it in, as it gives a very nice idea of what impression must have made to see a Great Auk on its cliff colonies.
On Monday, in a trip to the Flamborough Headland, I watched my first Little Auks. They are small, but solid little birds which breed in the High Arctic and winter in the North Sea. There were five of them, swimming into a south facing bay sheltered from the northerly wind and cold showers. I drew them in my Wacom tablet using pencil and watercolour and a simple two colour palette.
Bird Sketches 