Drawing the Red-Tailed Black Cockatoo, and That One Flash of Red

You hear them before you see them. A red-tailed black cockatoo does not arrive quietly, it drags a long creaking call across the top of the gums and the whole paddock looks up. Then they come over, slow and heavy, and every single time I stop what I am doing. Eight years in Dayboro and I have never once managed to keep working.

They are the hardest bird I draw. Not because of the shape, the shape is generous, all that bulk and that big blunt head. It is the colour problem. A red-tailed black cockatoo is essentially a black bird against a dark tree in flat Queensland light, and then somewhere in the tail there is a band of red that stops your heart. Put too much of it in and the drawing turns into a poster. Put too little and you have drawn a crow.

Take Light My Fire home, from $315
Unframed $315. Black or white frame $349, framed here in the studio.

That one took the longest. I built the whole bird in grey wash first, no red at all, and lived with it on the studio wall for a week to make sure the drawing stood up on its own. If a bird only works because of one bright colour then it is the colour doing the work, not the drawing. Only when I stopped noticing the absence did I let the red in. It went on last, in about ninety seconds, and I have not touched it since.

People ask me why I do not just draw them in colour. Because black and white makes you look harder. A colour photograph of a black cockatoo tells you what it looked like. Ink makes you decide what it was doing.

The one that went first

This was three of them on a branch, heads together, doing that sideways shuffle they do when they are working out whether to trust you.

I am not going to pretend that is still available, because it is not. It sold, and it is the one I would have kept. I mention it because it is the honest answer to the question I get most, which is whether there will be more like it. Sometimes. Not always, and not on demand. These are drawn one at a time from birds that turn up when they feel like it, and when one goes, that particular afternoon in the gums goes with it.

So if you are standing in front of one of the others wondering whether to think about it for a week, that is the only warning I can honestly give you. There is no second copy in a drawer.

What is still on the wall

Three pieces at the moment, and they are quite different animals.

That one is the cheapest thing in this story and probably my favourite bit of drawing in it. The rust took longer than the birds.

See Bush Club House, $79
Made to order, so there is a wait. It does get made.

I have put the corella in here on purpose. If you came looking for a black cockatoo drawing then you are the kind of person who watches big noisy birds cross a paddock, and that one is the same feeling caught in a different bird. All wind and wing and a stupid amount of yellow light. If it is not for you, ignore it, I will not be offended.

See Blue Eyed Winds, from $190
Unframed $190. Black frame $210.

If you are thinking about it

Every one of these is drawn by hand in Dayboro, and every one is framed here before it goes out. There is no print run sitting in a warehouse. That is the good part and the annoying part at the same time, and it is why Red in the Tree Tops is a photograph in this post rather than a link.

The birds will come back over the gums this afternoon, they always do before a storm. I will stop working again. Something will probably come of it.