Golden Japanese Crane

While I was traveling through Japan from mid-December 2022 to mid-February 2023, I kept seeing so many long-necked birds either perched in the middle of some body of water, or flying overhead. I couldn’t really tell if they were egrets, cranes, or herons, but I enjoyed watching all of them (am I turning into a bird watching guy?)

Along with seeing the animals themselves, I noticed that many Japanese businesses use the crane in their company logos such as Japan Airlines and Hakutsuru Sake. I figured it was finally time to draw one for myself, with a few geometric twists.

This wasn’t the first bird I drew along my travels. Being on the road, and having that ability to do whatever I wanted on my own time gave me a sense of freedom that I had never experienced before. The only (land) animals in the world that are untethered to any place like that are birds.

I think that is why I was so drawn to create this sketch. It was because that sense of freedom, and lack of limitations is what birds experience daily, gliding through the atmosphere where there are no defined paths or rigid conduits of direction.

The crane is just one of those majestic, free animals in control of where it wants to be in any given moment.

So when it came down to drawing this red-crowned crane, I began how I always do, and drew the golden rectangles. After staring at the paper for a while, I thought about how this bird moves in flight.

That’s when I saw it — the tip of the crane’s beak to the tip of the bird’s wing created a perfect square! Further cutting my drawing space into the golden grid, I saw that it’s body from beak to talons followed exactly on top of a horizontal grid line, and the wings could be contained within the middle space of the vertical grid lines.

The red-crowned crane was created perfectly according to these divine dimensions and it meant to be that it was subject of my drawing. Its flight between gold was my artistic license on the piece and I loved the way the gold progressively spaced out from tailfeather to beak.

It all came together like a bird moving majestically forward in flight.