The icy water surface of the flooded gravel pit is full of piping teal and wigeon, mallards, barnacle and pink footed geese, ascending lapwings and clouds of circling black headed gulls. Silent and hidden among broken reeds and rushes, the snipe are hunkering down. The stripes down their backs almost completely mimic their surroundings. A shrill cry above from a possible predator catapults birds into the air, but snipe stay still.
Snipe in the rushes: pen and watercolour
The soft winter evening light glows off their plumage and the myriad stripes of surrounding vegetation.
Snipe 2: fountain pen, conte crayon and photoshop glow filter
Snipe: fountain pen, conte crayon – original sketchbook
kestrelart 
beautiful drawings
I am going traditional, I love the feel of the pen and watercolour.
Happy New Year, Neil – good luck with everything.
Wonderful observational work – I love the first image especially. Always inspiring to see your work.
A happy new year of art to you.
Hard to choose between the treatments – lovely! Happy New Year!
I love all the lines – plumage markings, bill, reeds. Also these are from a wonderful point of view, right on level with the bird, as his fellow snipe might see him.
Such strange-looking birds, even by waterbird standards, with their eyes so far up the head. I’ll have to take a look at a snipe skull someday.
great stuff… really enjoying your work.
These are absolutely beautiful, kestralart. I am chuckling as I say this because I fell for the snipe hunt, years ago, at a camp I attended. Had I known they were so fragile looking and so harmless, they, the big kids, could never have gotten me to carry that gunny sack around and beat the brush with a stick! Ha! Thanks for the memory through your bird drawings and paintings!