How to draw a kookaburra

We were down the coast – and the backyard of our friends’ house was hosting a weekend party of birds: comic cockatoos with sulphur crests, a pair of stern kookaburras and a pair of red parrots, curious at the fuss.

It’s a challenge to sketch such fugitive subjects but the point is to observe – the relationships of curves and dark and light, of angles and twists, of patterns and solids. The great Lucien Freud will look at his models from various positions to comprehend the full figure and work out why certain parts of the anatomy cut away or make a strange shape. Some subjects – wild birds – do all the moving for you.

Your graphite is making a lot of guesses. Here is how the kookaburras got on the page –

The head:

The rest of the bird:

Number two:

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Here’s a snap of a cockatoo:

And a couple of sketches: