Red Bird of Paradise from Raja Ampat Islands

Birdwatchers who go to West Papua always want to see birds of paradise. There are 41 species known to science. They are scattered from north Maluku, to New Guinea and northern Australia. There are 37 species that live in New Guinea. One of them is Red Bird of Paradise (Paradisaea rubra). This bird lives in Waigeo, Batanta, and Gam islands of Raja Ampat regency.

Colored-pencil sketch of Red Bird of Paradise (Paradisaea rubra)
from the jungle of Waigeo island

As a tourist guide, I have organized birding and hiking tours to forest areas in West Papua province, particularly to Arfak mountains of Manokwari, Klasow valley of Sorong regency and Waigeo island of Raja Ampat. The red bird of paradise can be watched in Waigeo island particularly at the bank of Mamdifu river. Visitors need to stay in tents in the jungle for 1 night in order to watch the paradise birds early in the morning at 06.00 until 09.00. There also other birds that can be watched in the jungle such as Papuan Hornbill (Rhyticeros plicatus), Pink-spotted Fruit Dove (Ptilinopus perlatus), and a lot more.
After the birding tour in Raja Ampat, I usually continue the birding trip to Klasow valley in Sorong regency where visitors can watch Lesser Birds of Paradise (Paradisaea minor), King Bird of Paradise (Cicinnurus regius), Northern Cassowary and many other birds that live in tropical rainforest of West Papua. If you are interested in birding tour, please, contact me Charles Roring by email to: peace4wp@gmail.com or send whatsapp message to my number +6281332245180.

Drawing Feet

I return to the basics of figure drawing - practice, practice and more practice. This time parts of human body that attract my attention are feet. They are located at the lowest part of our body but they are quite difficult to draw. I have created several pencil drawing of feet on different positions or poses. The other parts of the body are not included because they are not my focus of attention now.

Drawing Human Feet

I also apply different pressure on the pencil strokes to create shades and hatchings so that the feet look more natural. I still make mistakes in drawing the toes particularly if some of them are slightly twisted. Our toes will not look normal if we use tight shoes every day. So, the shapes of our toes are determined by how frequent or how long we wear shoes.
I also make a small drawing of a lady at the bottom right corner of the sketch to compare the size of her feet and the length of her legs with the length of her arms and whole body.
This female figure is only an example of drawing exercise that I make to improve my understanding and skills in sketching human body. The proportions of legs have to be balanced with the sizes of head, arms, chest and stomach as well as hips.
Well, I will make more drawings of human figures beside drawings of flowers, birds, and other animals for this blog.

Also read:

• Drawing of Clothed Female Figure
• Figure Drawing of Cross-legged Sitting Lady

Figure Drawing Cross-legged Nude Sitting

Female Figure on Cross-legged Sitting Position

Drawing female human figure in sitting position is quite challenging particularly on the proportions of the legs compared to her whole body. I have just completed this sketch today. I only used my 2B Staedtler Mars Lumograph and Winsor & Newton A5 sketchbook. My hands are rather stiff after not practicing for several months. I need to get used to drawing on paper again after using tablet as my drawing media for sometime. The feel of holding a stylus and a pencil is totally different. Also the smoothness of the glass surface of a drawing tablet such as my Samsung Galaxy Tab A is totally different from paper.
Although I now use tablet more for drawing flowers or fish and birds, I still like drawing on paper especially for human figure. It gives me full control of what I will create out of just a piece of pencil or charcoal stick.

Cross-legged Female Figure in Sitting Position

For me, pencil strokes are more natural for drawing human figure than stylus ones. After finishing my sketch, I continued the work by coloring it. I used Derwent Watercolor pencils and applied moderate strokes to create hatching on shaded area of the female figure. The colors that I used were Ivory Black 67, Golden Brown 59, Deep Chrome 9, Bronze 52 and Raw Sienna 58, and Mineral Green 45.
The next drawing is the result of the coloring works.
The artwork is now available in my redbubble store, printed on various products such as cell phone wallet, tote bags, clocks or studio pouch. If you are interested in buying some of these products, just click the above pictures.