Scribbling Turkeys

Not long ago I did something I haven't done in a long time.

I pulled out my crayons and drew a hand turkey.  Because I grew up in the United States, I drew a lot of hand turkeys in grade school.  It's just something teachers taught us to do...

Scribbling that turkey using a kids' method was a lot of fun--I particularly enjoyed the tactile sense of tracing my hand with the crayon.  And I also enjoyed using a brand new crayon!  The smell.  So wonderful!  So many memories!

Then I decided to try drawing a more realistic turkey, just for fun. 

I live in the woods and turkeys often visit us.  One of my favorite photos captures the moment when a turkey came up to the house and looked in a lower floor window, only to be stalked by my cat who stood inside the house on my studio desk.  I decided to do a quick sketch based on that photo.

I drew this quickly in pen on my sugar cane paper notebook, then filled in with the watercolor.  As I've posted previously, the properties of this paper cause really interesting effects with this paint.  I love the way it patterned the bird's feathers in particular.

Two very different turkeys sketched in two very different ways.  Comparing the two made me think about the methods, how we draw as kids, what we see, what we remember. 

I'm inspired to do more scribbles of the same subject in different ways just to see what I can see!