Visit my Fine Art America shop - a selection of my prints!

Thursday, June 22, 2017

Cedar or Bohemian Waxwing birds - Exercises and studies/practices in watercolor, 6/20/17

Tuesday, 6/20/17
First some wash practices on decent copy or multi-purpose paper. Aim for getting down a sloppy mix that lets the pigment and water do its own thing. While those sheets are drying, practice capturing the birds, (from some photo references you have found), by painting only the darkest parts. Do a whole bird at a time that way. You can see there is only the face mask, some wing tips, and legs/feet. You have to imagine the rest of the bird in order to place these markings as one bird, and not a chopped up bird. When a sheet of washes is dry, paint a bird as previously. Add some painting in the negative areas to bring out the bird.

These birds gather here in early spring picking old berries off the fruit trees. I want to know where they go after they have cleaned up.

In adult art class on 6/19/17 we did variations of this, drawing with crayons. Students were to select two crayons/colors randomly. (Blindly take two crayons out of the box. If they are too similar, put one back and pick again. No white crayons either.)

No comments:

Post a Comment