Sketch of the Week: New feather studies

As I've mentioned previously, I've been working on some new projects with cyanotypes. Not to give too much away, but one of these undertakings involves a series of feather studies. Most of these were done about two years ago, but I've also done some more recent drawings:

An ongoing development in my own artistic practice is learning that sometimes less is more when it comes to detail. In my older drawings I made a point of drawing every line on the feathers, but this time I tried to let the values themselves do the describing, particularly in the large feather in the top right corner. Obviously I still drew in a lot of the lines, but I tried to leave the lighter areas alone this time, letting the gray washes themselves at least partly define the forms.