Nest Drawing

This was definitely a very new experience to me as I have never attempted to paint a nest before—do not be fooled, no matter how simple this may look, this was extremely difficult. Practice certainly helped a lot in this process, especially the fifteen second ones which really helped me to get a sense of what the basic shape of the nest was. When I first started on my final piece, I decided to draw the nest from the side which to me did not really look like a nest at all. When I restarted, I did it on a piece of rice paper and from more of a bird’s eye view (pun intended) of the nest which I liked a lot more. In the purple rice paper, you could see the different materials used for the paper which to me felt similar in essence to a nest which takes materials from it’s surroundings to come up with a finished product. I used ink to paint the nest which was a lot of fun seeing as I rarely work in ink, and I think it was very helpful in getting dark values and also capturing the loose fluidity of all of the different branches and sticks twined together. The bright purple ink was also a lot of fun and I think it added a lot of interest. As a finishing touch, I ended up adding pieces of newspaper to the nest which I thought again captured the craftiness and thrown together-ness of nests.