Carolina Chickadee in Snowy Holly

I have several nature-related traditions during the winter months that keep color and inspiration in my life. One of these is making home-made bird suet as a treat for my feathered winter friends. 

The second is painting birds in watercolor!  As I was going through my reference photo files recently, I ran across this chickadee that I painted in January of 2009, along with photos of the progression of the painting. It contains some of my favorite elements of a sketch--looseness and and a splash of color among neutrals.

I start my paintings with a sketch, a map of sorts.  The sketch above is loose in some places and more detailed in others.  I like some suggestion and mystery, but I also enjoy the details that define the bird species.  Both of these elements bring the artist's emotion into the work.  Not only does the viewer see a rendition of the subject, they also enjoy a wholistic expression of the artist's experience--the magic of art. Invariably, as the artist focuses deeply on the subject being painted, that emotion comes to life.

Have you ever watched the behavior of Carolina Chickadees near the feeder?  They are tiny, fairly-like creatures, voicing their opinion about everything with "chick-a-dee-dee-dee" calls.  In the winter they travel in mixed flocks with Tufted Titmice and Downy Woodpeckers visiting feeders in a rotating fashion.  All that company encourages lots of vocalizations.

Painting snow presents a fun challenge in watercolor.  The snow is created with the white of the paper giving you plenty of opportunity to paint negative space or the space around the snow as you create the flow of color and light that leads the eye through the painting.

This sketch is primarily made up of neutrals with a splash of color, an arrangement I find particularly appealing for its subtlety.  I used ultramarine blue, vandyke brown and sepia to make variations of gray and brown for my neutrals, and added quinacridone gold to the blue to create the greens and Winsor Deep Red for the berries.  Use of the same base colors, the blue and brown, throughout, unifies the colors in the painting.

Bringing the subject's colors into the sketch early allows you to shape the background colors and areas of dark and light to highlight the main subject effectively.   The branches are shaped by wetting the paper and adding color in the direction of the shape of the limb.  As the paint is drying, more color is added to the shaded areas, giving it its rounded appearance.

While painting, stepping back or away from the painting from time to time helps to bring fresh eyes.  I want the colors and the lights and darks to lead my eyes to the subject and through the painting so the viewer can take in the whole affect.  In this sketch, the darks, primarily the branches, lead the eyes to the chickadee in a v-shaped fashion and beyond to the edge of the paper.  The contrasting berries point to the bird like an arrow, faintly reappearing on the opposite side of the bird (below) to lead the eye off the page.

Carolina Chickadees use an intricate network of tiny muscles to fluff out the more than 2000 feathers on their body in the winter months, creating a warm insulation of air between feathers.  They visit suet and sunflower feeders, giving our yards the lively gift of activity during winter months.

Carolina Chickadee in Snowy Holly was created in watercolor on Canson, Montval Field, All-Media Book, 90 lb Cold Press Watercolor Paper.

Links and resources:

For more on negative painting, you may enjoy:  Creating Fall Leaves and Don't throw out the kindergarden efforts.
Montval Field All Media Book at Dick Blick art supplies.
Carolina Chickadee at Cornell All About Birds.

Fun with Fall Leaves--Creating Layers

True to the nature of autumn, rain and winds have blown many leaves off our trees creating a bed of colorful leaves on the ground.  Painting layers of leaves is a fun way to practice negative painting, glazing with thin layers of color, and softening edges--three skills you will use over and over again while painting. 

Visually, lighter objects in a painting move forward.  Darker objects move backward. This is one of the ways we create depth in a painting. In negative painting we are painting the negative space around the subject. In this case, when we paint the areas around the leaves, we are also creating a darker layer. When we add a leaf to this darker area, the leaf appears to move farther away visually.  

   

To create a painting with layers of leaves, select three primary colors to use in your painting--a red, blue and yellow. You can mix additional colors from these three, such as mixing blue and red, to make purple. I selected Phthalo blue, Aureolin for my yellow, and Permanent Alizarin Crimson for my red. I also used New Gamboge, a rich shade of yellow, and Burnt Sienna to begin the first layer.     

Begin by taping your paper to a backboard on all sides. A one-fourth sheet of watercolor paper (11 x 15") will give you plenty of room to build your leaf layers. The demonstration is on a 9 x 12 inch sheet. I'm using Arches 140# cold press paper. 

Wet your paper with a spray bottle or by brushing clear water across the paper. Pour off excess water by holding your paper vertically and wiping away the drips that collect at the edge of the tape.  When the paper has had time to absorb the water, create a juicy multi-colored wash on the paper with the lightest shades of the colors you've selected.  I chose to use shades of yellow and burnt sienna. Let this first layer dry completely.

Draw or trace a leaf on the dry wash, as above. Create a background for that leaf by painting a thin layer of color around its edges and brushing that color out until the edge disappears (known as soft edges or losing edges).  

To soften the edges, rinse your brush with clear water and brush the damp brush across the edges of the glaze. When this glaze is completely dry, draw another leaf and create a glaze around that leaf, letting it dry completely before adding the next. As you add leaves, draw the leaves so they are partially hidden under the leaf before it. As you work, notice how the water and pigment interact and make adjustments to how much water you use if needed.    

Above, you see a bloom (upper right) created by too much water in relation to pigment. The water moved the pigment beyond the softened edge.  You may find that you get the mix of water and pigment just right sometimes and other times, not. Sometimes you may forget to let the glaze dry. Notice what happens.  Explore and play.

The smoothness of my layers improved with practice.  Below, you can see the progression of the layers and how the painting begins to change with each additional glaze.  

As I worked, I noticed that I liked the way the greens began to cool down the yellows. I also liked seeing the pigment under the glaze shining through.   

Could you see the leaves moving backward as you glazed?  What did you notice about color? I enjoyed watching the greens on the right side of my painting (below) turn to that beautiful shade of blue. Purple mixed from the same blue created a lovely accent.

Below is another one of my explorations on an 11 x 15 inch quarter sheet of Arches 140# cold press paper. 

And here's another one below, created some time ago, with iris blossoms and leaves. 

Links and resources:

Fun with Fall Leaves series

My galleries at Vickie Henderson Art

Why leaves change colors

Winsor Newton watercolors

Winsor Newton watercolor color chart

Arches watercolor paper

Brother's Plant--Part III

This sketchbook spread started out as a field sketch practice, an attempt to sketch a subject that will be still, unlike the birds I enjoy painting.  It gave me much more.

In addition to the memories that unfolded, it pulled me deeper into this prolific and hardy plant, its beauty, shape, shadows and color.  I still wonder how it manages to withstand the cold winter.  I learned that this has something to do with its ability to store water and a unique metabolic process that happens when the temperature drops.  But in my brief research, I didn't learn enough to explain it to anyone.

I am often drawn to the visual detail of a subject, so much so, that it is sometimes hard for me to shift my focus out, allowing the loose sketch work its magic.  I love this aspect of art, especially in watercolor.  It is a challenge for me to hold on to this awareness as I paint.

When I added detail to the left group of flowers, I wasn't happy with the result.  It pulled my eye away from what I found to be the most captivating part of the sketch, the top and right group of flowers that spilled over the side.  The overall effect was "too busy".

So for this occasion, I pulled out my soft scrub brush and "erased" the added detail.  I liked this area much better flowing loose with just a hint of shadow and shape.

Above you see the area after it's been scrubbed.  And below, the same area with replacement color added.  I couldn't recapture the freshness of what was there before, but I did restore some subtlety.  

The final sketch gives me a lot of information for future reference.  Below you see the original sketch created on the patio on the left, the final sketch on the right.  See what you think.

For more information about using a scrub brush visit:  Sketching a Limpkin.  For more about negative space visit:  Search for a Swainson's Warbler.  The first post on this sketchbook spread is:  My Brother's Plant

Brother's Plant--Part II

My unfinished sketch of the pot of hen-and-chicks is moving forward in interrupted increments, as in, whatever time I can grab before and after office hours.  

I discover as I paint, what kind of mood I'm in.  Sometimes I'm satisfied with a very loose and undefined result, other times I want to see more detail.  Most often I like a combination.  In this case, I was drawn to the rosette shapes of the flowers and the spilling over, the cascading of the rosettes as they multiply.  So I printed a black and white copy of one of my photographs and sketched some rosettes in pencil on the sketch page to get a better feel for their layered petals.

Next, I wanted to reclaim some of the rim of my pot from the too-wet wash that spilled over the edge, as well as, the edge of the lower opening of the pot.  Above you see the small size scrub I used.  For more about this scrub brush and the process of scrubbing see the link at the end of the post.  Below you see the result of lifting out some of the paint with the use of my scrub brush, water, and a tissue for blotting.

I created some loosely defined rosettes in the top of the pot with negative painting, that is, painting the space around the petal rather than the petal itself.  This is fun.  I believe negative painting and softening edges are two of my favorite approaches to painting.

Below, you see the page spread as it looks today--still unfinished, but becoming more of what I want to see on the page.      

For more about using a scrub brush visit:  Sketching a Limpkin.  For more about negative space visit:  Search for a Swainson's Warbler.  The first post on this sketchbook spread is:  My Brother's Plant

The Search for a Swainson's Warbler

In the case of this sketch, it was the search for the right colors to bring out this beautiful bird's subtleness on paper.  

The Swainson's Warbler is a shy and secretive bird that hangs out in the shadows of thick stands of rhododendrons.  That is one of the reasons this bird has the reputation of being seldom seen even when its song is heard.  Its neutral colors simply disappear into the shadows.

On this occasion, with a group of birders and terrific guides at the New River Birding and Nature Festival, the odds of seeing this bird were better.  It landed on a rhododendron branch right in front of us.  Even then it took alert eyes to find him.  What a thrill to get such intimate looks as he perched quietly.  I love these subtle colors, the way his posture, this moment, says so much about his personality and his habitat.

It is always a challenge for me to go small in a sketch, so instead of focusing on the detail I love, I used this opportunity to play with color and values so that the negative space would make the neutrals in the bird stand out.  

The foreground leaves are created with a mixture of  DVP Cad Yellow Light and WN ultramarine; the shrub limbs, with burnt sienna, ultramarine and a touch of Van Dyke brown here and there.  Above I tried a darker green mixture in the negative space.  Too blue.  Below, I added some Van Dyke brown to see what happened.

Still too blue.  It was here that I decided to add more color to the bird to help guide me.  I initially painted him with a mixture of burnt sienna and Van Dyke brown.  The overall affect is more reddish than desired but it gave me a place to begin.  It also enabled me to see the disconnect between background and subject at this phase.  There was no unifying color. This is not only not pleasing to the eye, it isn't what we see in nature.  And it especially isn't true for this secretive little bird who frequently can't be seen at all.

So I warmed the background by adding WN New Gamboge to ultramarine and added some burnt sienna in spots.  Next, I smoothed and shaped the bird's head using my scrub brush and more paint, added some shadows, and painted a light glaze of ultramarine over the wing and back to subdue the brightness of the burnt sienna.  

All of this playing around made me smile about this bird once again.  I thought he was wonderful when I saw him the first time.  Creating the sketch just made me want to paint him even more!  

Watercolor on 90# cold press sketchbook paper.  Colors used:  WN Ultramarine, WN Burnt Sienna, DVP Cad Yellow Light, WN New Gamboge, Van Dyke Brown.