The snowy egret I'k sketching is not cooperating. I can't get its kinked however sinewy cervix to wait right. And its legs—in that location shouldn't be four of them! My bird looks like a pistachio stuck with a speared olive, walking on clothespins.

Meanwhile, equally I scrawl with a pencil on a small sketchpad, my model—a wild bird—continues pecking at mudflats in Bolinas Lagoon, between Northern California's Bespeak Reyes National Seashore and the Gilded Gate National Recreation Area, completely oblivious to my artistic frustrations.

I'm enrolled in an avian cartoon class at the Point Reyes Birding and Nature Festival. My instructor is John Muir Laws, a California-based artist, naturalist, educator, scientist, and field guide writer (he's related only "by spirit" to the legendary naturalist). After a morn crash course on the basics, gear up in the classroom, Laws has led about a dozen of us developed students into a breezy, lord's day-streaked April day to attempt our hands at field sketching.

Raised by an amateur botanist and a birder, Laws learned to love nature at an early age. A family friend turned him on to drawing, a pursuit that became an essential tool—Laws is severely dyslexic and supplements written observations of the natural earth with sketches. Now 46, Laws has devised a novel array of tips that may not transform you overnight into the next David Sibley but are easy and rewarding to follow. They make their print debut this September in his new book, The Laws' Guide to Drawing Birds (Heyday Books). "We accept this myth that drawing is a souvenir," says Laws, simply "it'south a skill that any of us can acquire." What's more, developing that skill leads to much more than only artwork—information technology can make y'all a better birder or naturalist past forcing you lot to pay close attention to what you're sketching. "You're seeing details that have always been in that location in front of you just you've never really been able to focus on," says Laws.

While I am somewhat artistic, until my course with Laws, I had nearly no experience drawing birds aside from the occasional putter. If tasked with penciling in, say, a blue jay perched on a nearby branch, I probably would accept begun past outlining its contours. But that'southward not the all-time approach, according to Laws. To get started, he instead suggests 3 basic steps. Start, before anything, notice the bird's posture—is it looking up? Head down?—and describe a simple line, like an axis, suggestive of that position.

Adjacent, focus on the bird's proportions. Where is the head relative to the body, and what size are the 2? Using the initial line you drew equally a guide, block in the proportions with circular shapes. The outcome should exist something vaguely resembling Frosty the Snowman. At this stage—and this is disquisitional—double-check your work. Those who don't will acquire the hard style. "At the terminate of the cartoon they'll say, 'My bird looks wrong'," says Laws. "That's because you accept a western sandpiper with a head the size of a chickadee. And at that point, there'south nothing that you can actually do to prepare that." (You can use an eraser, simply I find information technology cumbersome.)

One time the proportions check out, wait for the bird'due south defining angles, such every bit where the head and tail connect with the body. "I recall of carving those into these bubbles of proportion that I've ready," says Laws. "I then have a framework [in which] I tin can come along and start to put in the detail." To ameliorate identify these angles, have note of "negative infinite"—that is, the area effectually the bird that's not bird. Focusing on this open space will bring the individual's defining edges into stark relief.

Mastering these three steps helps capture what Laws calls the bird'southward oomph or, as some birders say, its jizz—the essence of the species. "What is finchiness, finchosity? You desire your chickadee to be chickadee-esque," says Laws, your magpie to exist "magpie-y." Call up of Roger Tory Peterson'southward silhouettes. They're deceptively simple, black shapes, notwithstanding they clearly stand for one blazon of bird, fifty-fifty without the details.

What comes next depends on what you want to focus on—private feathers or markings, perhaps an eye, perhaps the patterns of light and nighttime from plume and shadows. Understanding birds' general anatomy, discussed in Laws's book, will help you brand sense of your observations. But the fundamental to field sketching is to draw what you encounter, and not what you think should be there. For example, even if yous know that birds have three frontwards-facing toes but only one is visible, "you can just draw one toe," says Amanda Krauss, an artist and fellow student in my grade who has had trouble rendering bird anxiety. "It was similar a lightbulb went off for me."

Illustration: John Muir Laws

Nature sketching guides abound, merely where birds are concerned, Laws thinks his fills a void. "Some books will have illustrations that are really inspiring," he says, just they don't explicate how the drawings are made. "I wanted to really deconstruct what is happening when I make my lines, where I'm looking, where I suggest that people focus."

He'south breaking new ground, says Hannah Hinchman, a nature journalist and artist who in one case taught Laws in a workshop and reviewed an early draft of his volume. "In that location's zippo static," she says. "He just refuses to see these mobile, fluid birds as objects. He sees them as live, and that's the way they come up beyond on the page."

Drawing outside is crucial to creating a realistic bird in two dimensions. The easiest species may even be 1 that'south most accessible, like your lawn cardinal or house finch. As you lot observe, jot down notes in addition to sketching, and ponder out loud, asking yourself questions such as, "What does this bird remind me of?" or "I wonder why it has markings like that?" (At Bolinas, one classmate suggested that a flock of pond cormorants resembled Phoenician ships.) While the very act of drawing helps solidify a memory, verbalizing what yous're seeing ingrains it that much more than. Should the bird fly off, you'll nevertheless accept a few details in mind to flesh out your drawing.

Sketching outdoors will also help yous achieve what Laws considers one of the about important goals in drawing birds: forging a more meaningful connection with nature. In other words, don't aim for the perfect moving-picture show; you'll but get frustrated if information technology doesn't plough out right. Instead, draw to observe more deeply and to remember those precious moments removed from the mechanized globe. The more than focused you are on experiencing what you lot're seeing, the less you'll care about your masterpiece, and "that frees y'all up to make lots of drawings," says Laws. Every bit a pleasant by-product, "the more than y'all depict, the ameliorate it gets."

I'1000 nevertheless learning the ropes. My snowy egret is hardly a mirror prototype, but now I know that I tin ignore my inner fine art critic—a liberating concept. Even so, establishing a drawing habit is hard; I've practiced a few times since my form. On one gorgeous, mild solar day in May I visit a lake near my Brooklyn apartment. Spying several mute swans, I settle down with my sketchpad near a tree. I detect how one bird's cervix fluidly recoils like a snake, and I adore the species' dramatic, inky eyeliner. A human and a male child study the way one swims—something I run across, likewise, marveling at its feet like congenital-in paddles. I'm reminded of what Laws told me: "If y'all can go yourself to boring down and appreciate that bird, for whatever it has new to teach you, the wonders that you're going to see in even the most common things are infinite." How could I resist?