Spring seems to have left us ,as the rain falls on my studio roof, April showers are now order of the day and the temperature has most definitely dropped. I keep nice and cosy and sit enjoying new views from the large windows in my studio.
I like to allow myself to paint whatever I fancy towards the end of the week and sea birds have been attracting my attention . Today I wanted to keep things simple and concentrate on the birds and their reflections, letting the white paper do the work for me. It has been a lovely day painting osytercatchers
I have mt equipment ready, my trusty watercolour paints , etc and a nice cup of tea
Then I draw the image onto bockingford watercolour paper,
No masking fluid needed , just watercolour paint and water.
I start with the eyes, I use a very small brush as these eyes are tiny and I still want them to shine
Look carefully and I leave a small white dot to reflect the light starting with my lightest colour and going darker
I went around the eyes first then moved to the beak to let the eyes dry . The beaks need to stand out too. I do just love the colours on these birds, they seem to have such cheeky characters
So I move between the eyes and the beaks making sure I leave highlights of white paper or very light yellow to show how shiny things are
Then onto the bodies
I start by adding the shadow to the underneath of the birds, to make them feel 'real' and give them that 3 dimensional-ness
Then onto the black feathers, and here I use cerulean blue and purple lake as well to give the feathers shine and highlights. I use Paynes Grey for the black
Finally I work on the reflections, you are almost painting 4 birds ( not 2) I wanted the reflections to speak for themselves and not add any paint for the water. I did turn my paper up side down and kept standing back to check it looked ok.
I didn't mention those fabulous legs but take care with those too.
This painting is quite precise and it hangs on the precision so take your time and have fun x
1 comment
Very helpful Rachel. Ty, John