for this exercise, i wanted to work with watercolour… and i was in the mood to try painting a bird. watercolour has always eluded me, i tend to overwork it resulting in muddy colours. i like to layer and lean toward opaque paints like gouache & acrylic, versus transparency.
painting a bird in watercolour, warming up practice painting a horse.
1st attempt
I pulled a reference photo, with the goal of only using water colour and completed a first attempt.
there was a very heavy dark shadow covering a large portion of the bird and i wasn’t entirely sure how to proceed. so i stopped and thought i should check out some other artists work.
after watching a few videos from this channel, i was ready to give it another go. what a difference it makes to take a step back and remind myself of watercolour painting techniques before diving in.
i absolutely love this style, for the subject of birds. this artist pulled images from unsplash as well for her art (in the videos i saw). i enjoy hearing about the entire process from beginning to end. as an artist, i see value in that.
i have subscribed because i feel like Louise De Masi is a great instructor and enjoyable to watch.
i would recommend to anyone interested in learning watercolour to watch real time footage of an artist working with the medium. this was the first channel i’ve seen real time footage of watercolour.
i looked at many references, but these stood out the most.
it is so deceiving when i’ve only ever seen sped up footage of the process. i’ve been over-correcting and not fully understanding how important it is to learn how to work with the flow of the water. it takes time for each layer to dry and until it does, the paint continues moving.
rather than allowing the layer to fully dry, im doubting myself and start editing before it’s ready.
reference photo
I have a library of reference photos saved to my PLEX media server. i like my references on the big screen. i created a new folder for “Photos” > “Birds” and placed all the free stock photos into this folder.
My media server setup.Now i can display the reference image through my ROKU device.
what is next?
as i was painting the birds initially, i began envisioning this bird sitting outside my window. as i was editing the footage, it sparked the idea to continue working with this image to produce the next.
i enjoy the texture of our feathered friends but trying to depict that using watercolour is a struggle for me.
if you like birds, you may enjoy this painting i created using egg tempera with cadmium & ultramarine pigments.
16hx12w.in, egg tempera and gold leaf on masonite.
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