Birds are easy to draw

The easiest animals to draw and paint are birds. This is due to their rounded and tapering shape and absence of complicated structure. To draw birds it is not necessary to go too far. You can find a model in your garden, in any pet shop, photographs in books or magazines or at the zoo.

The first thing a beginner should study before drawing any animal is its anatomy. Many amateur artists think that the birds are very difficult to draw because they rarely stay still for long. So, they never attempt to draw this fascinating subject.

Figure 1 shows different heads and beaks of the avian friends . Notice how the shape of the beaks differ. Many artists tend to draw birds in profile because they are easier to identify from this angle.

The outline drawings of Figure 1 show four kinds of bird heads. The top four drawings are of a peregrine falcon.

Under this is a duck, then a seagull and at the bottom heads of small song birds. When you want to draw a bird, first take a good look at the overall shape. Next start by drawing the basic shape accurately.

There are many kinds of birds in different shapes and sizes. The most common birds in the country are the sparrow, crow, mynah, parrot, king fisher, cuckoo and peacock. They can be observed in many places like paddy fields, lake sides and forests.

Remember great attention must be paid to the initial sketch of the bird. Once the initial sketch is done, finish off the lines that define the anatomy of the bird.

At the start try using a 2B pencil to make things easier. Next transform the sketches to pen and ink drawings to gain more practice and accuracy.

Globescan:

Spectacular solar flare erupts from the Sun

The sun erupted in an amazing solar flare on April 16, unleashing an intense eruption of super-heated plasma that arced high above the star's surface before blasting out into space.The powerful solar flare occurred at 1:45 p.m. EDT (1745 GMT) and registered as a moderate M1.7-class on the scale of sun storms, placing it firmly in the middle of the scale used by scientists to measure flare strength.

The storm is not the strongest this year from the Sun, but photos and video of the solar flare captured by NASA spacecraft revealed it to be an eye-popping display of magnetic plasma.

"Great eruption happening on the Sun now," scientists with NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) wrote in a Twitter post. The solar flare erupted along the sun's eastern limb (its left side) from an active region that may also be responsible for solar storm activity observed on April 16, SDO mission officials said. The flare kicked up a massive amount of solar plasma in an explosion known as a coronal mass ejection, or CME.

"Such eruptions are often associated with solar flares, and in this case an M1 class (medium-sized) flare did occur at the same time, though it was not aimed toward Earth," officials with NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., explained in an image description. The Goddard center oversees the sun-monitoring SDO mission.

When aimed at Earth, strong solar flares and CMEs can supercharge the planet's auroras, also known as the northern and southern lights. Extremely powerful

CMEs can pose a danger to astronauts and satellites in space, as well as power grids, navigation and communications systems on Earth.

Astronomers measure solar flares on a letter scale, with the strongest events falling into three categories: C, M and X. C-class solar flares are the weakest events, with the X-class sun storms marking the most powerful events on the Sun.

The Sun is currently in an active phase of its 11-year solar weather cycle and is expected to reach its peak activity in 2013. The current solar weather cycle is known as Solar Cycle 24.

Courtesy: Internet