Assignment 1.2 - On/Off Experiment

On Saturday, January 24, I saw a freshly dead pigeon on the sidewalk while walking my dog to the vet. It hadn't died violently, it perhaps just flew into a building window. Its right wing covered it like a death shroud while it's left wing shot out at odd angles. I desperately wanted to capture it, somehow.

My initial thought for the On/Off Experiment was to purposefully take my dog for a walk without technology, i.e: leave my phone at home and explore how I moved about the city without it. But when I saw the pigeon, I thought it would be a good opportunity to explore how to draw it without taking a photo, or googling pictures of pigeons. It was a particularly challenging experiment because I love drawing from life. 

So, we went through the vet appointment, I came home, and my husband was watching the news. ICE had just murdered Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. The dead pigeon took on a whole new meaning, as I processed yet another federally-endorsed killing at the hands of the Trump Administration. Pigeons are smart creatures; they mate for life, they recognize faces. And yet, they are often regarded as a public nuisance. Seeing a dead pigeon on the sidewalk is not an uncommon occurrence, but something about the freshness of this pigeon, coupled with the news, gave it a bit more gravitas. So, I challenged myself to draw it without taking a photo of it, without using technology (i.e: Googling 'dead pigeon'). 

In order of making: 

I started with the top charcoal drawing, which was done while watching the news. I started with lots of rage and dark marks. But I lost sight of the pigeon itself because I realized I had no idea how the pigeon wings actually attached to the body. I left the drawing, moved to a small sketch book, and started to sketch wings from my own memory, but figured it was wrong. Then, I remembered that I had a die-cast pigeon that I got as a Christmas gift, so I grabbed it and looked how the wings were attached to the body, as well as individual features. I made sketches, and a drawing on Yupo, and revisited the original drawing to refine it a bit. I am going to keep revisiting the charcoal drawing.