October Arrivals
In October Rainbow Bee Eaters fly south from New Guinea, northern Australia and parts of Indonesia to breed. One of the easiest places to observe them if you happen to live in Perth is at Lake Gwelup. The birds in this area are so used to photographers that they positively POSE for the camera.
The birds arrive and so do the photographers. I knew nothing about these birds until this year. It is thanks to the generous and enthusiastic Facebook members of the group “Western Australian Birds” that I became aware of RBEs and where to find them.
When Matthew and I turned up at Lake Gwelup the bird paparazzi were also there. I seemed to be the only photographer without a huge telephoto lens. Mostly the photographers were intent on getting shots of these gorgeous birds flying (which is pretty hard to do). I was more interested in a portrait so that I could do a character study.
This Rainbow Bee Eater reminds me of the Peanuts character Snoopy. It’s something about the glint in his eye; he is supremely self-confident, at ease in his world, razor sharp and adorable all at once. Behind him and in the distance a photographer stalks with her telephoto lens at the ready.
The bird in the photo below may be the same one as in my drawing as it and the source photo for my drawing were taken a minute apart. I call this photo, “Matt hoping to see a Rainbow Bee Eater”.
I loved doing this drawing – it flowed without struggle from start to finish. (I certainly can’t say that about all my drawings.) Here is one of my tricks for creating light-as-air filigree-type marks which en masse add up to an out-of-focus effect. I insert a full-length pencil into a pencil extender so that the pencil becomes very long. Held loosely at the far end of the extender the marks produced are feather-light. It is, in fact, more like painting than drawing.
Thank you for coming to Gwelup!!
Julie Podstolski - Abstract Realism 