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American Crow

American Crow line art illustration (click image to enlarge)

American Crow illustration (click image to enlarge)

Artist's notes:

The American Crow was completed on 12.21.2011. For such an ubiquitous bird, it took me many years to get around to actually illustrating it. Unfortunately, when you work in stipple as I do, often purely or mostly black animals can be daunting to draw, as many hours will be needed to fill in the dark areas, dot by dot. I found a great reference photo by the talented photographer Elisabeth Weir who was kind enough to allow me to use it to base this illustration on. It ended up not taking as long as I feared and I believe the result is a fairly strong drawing.

Information about the American Crow:

The American Crow is a member of the order of Passeriformes or perching birds. They are about 16–20 inches long (40–50 cm) with the tail making up about 40% their total length. Each wing is around 11–14 inches long (27–34 cm) Crows are highly intelligent birds that can be found in nearly every type of environment on the planet - natural or man-made. They've been witnessed using tools to obtain food or solve other types of problems. On a road where there is slow moving traffic, crows in Japan learned to drop tough-shelled nuts onto it, and waiting for the cars to run over and break open the nuts, returning then to eat them. While they look similar to ravens, the crow can be distinguished by being somewhat smaller and billed, which is slightly more curved.