Song sparrow painting almost done!

After completing the bark on the tree trunk, I can now move on to finishing the final details on the sparrow. I will probably revisit the background, more specifically, the right hand side area of the painting where the single thin tree is located.

Sparrow painting update

Before continuing on the tree trunk bark, I decided it was best to finish working the background and redrawing the bird so that it is now larger.  I like this so much better as the bird's size looks more proportionate with the barbed wire.

I may end up cropping the painting differently because I notice the larger bird is now too centred.
Several options include further cropping out the right hand side to move the bird out of centre or making the paining square format by cropping out some of both sides....we'll see!



A slight retouch is in order...

OOPS!! Seems as I was drawing in the barbed wire I made it too large in relation to the bird so now a touch up is in order. Tomorrow, I will continue to work on the bark of the trunk and will have to redraw the bird slightly larger.
It's probably better that way anyways because it will be easier to add the details on a larger bird.

Progress of bird on a wire painting

There was quite a bit of blending and layering happening in the background this afternoon. I wanted to achieve a glowing effect using warm colors so that the brown sparrow would stand out against the lighter backdrop.

 I have not added the fencepost wire at this stage and so the bird looks like it is floating but that will change in the next update.

 

I am using pastel on light sage colored suede for this piece.

 

A few bird paintings waiting in the wings...

I want to get a few bird paintings finished in the next few weeks and decided to start one using suede because I can usually complete them faster than on other surfaces. I have another started of an African crowned crane using pastel on sandpaper and I will be working on that one as well.

I have several other paintings that have been started and need to revisit the easel so I can complete them. I hope to get to all of those before summer sets in as I hardly have time to paint then when most of my time is devoted to field work and collecting reference photographs.

The new bird painting below is of a sparrow on a barbed fence wire.