Blue-gray Gnatcatcher on Red-twig Dogwood Transparent Watercolor + Time-lapse Video
Blue-gray gnatcatchers are fantastic tiny birds. I love seeing them return in the spring with their boisterous, coarse, squeaky call. They are super energetic, constantly flailing that long tail around as they skitter about in the foliage. Taxonomically, they reside between wrens and wood warblers. They certainly look like a cross between the two. They seem to display an appealing combination of both: the attitude of wrens and the cuteness of warblers. Size-wise they are tiny, smaller than chickadees!
These gnatcatchers start building nests almost immediately upon arriving here in mid-Michigan. Their adorable cup-shaped, lichen-and-spider-web lined creations look a bit like giant hummingbird nests. They incubate for a mere 10-14 days. That is crazy fast! My go-to mountain biking destination usually has loads of them, and it’s fun to look for their nests. Once they are done breeding, they seem to completely disappear. I’m not sure if they migrate south early or just stick around quietly.
Please contact me if you’re interested in buying the original watercolor or a print of this painting. Some of my work is also available for licensing.
Fall Female Yellow-rumped Warbler Transparent Watercolor and Time-lapse Video
This is my third Yellow-rumped Warbler painting of the year, which is probably a record for me. We had a lot of great fall color and plenty of yellow-rumps in the area. Although the bird is based on photos I took last fall in northwest Ohio, the background colors were mostly inspired by the paper birch tree in our backyard, which put on a spectacular display last month. Though my Ohio photos had a drab gray-green background, they included attractive back lighting on the bird, making them ideal to re-invent with a different background and “tuned-up” lighting. I had a lot of fun working on this and trying the capture the glow you occasionally see on magical fall days.
Male birds with their showy breeding plumage seem to get all the attention. I have no data to prove it, but I’m certain they are the subjects of many more paintings. I’ve definitely been guilty of rendering more male birds over the years. Whenever I paint female birds, I really appreciate their subtle beauty, and some of my favorite paintings are of them. The same goes for fall warblers. One of my all-time favorite Michigan birds is the fall-plumed Chestnut-sided Warbler. They are too cute. I’ve GOT to paint one of those soon!
Black-throated Green Warbler Transparent Watercolor and Time-lapse Video
I love Black-throated Green Warblers. My daughter Kelly remembers their call with the mnemonic “Trees, trees, taller trees!” That’s more useful than the “zoo zee, zoo zoo zee” which I learned. Either way, it’s a fun call, just more literally appropriate with my daughter’s version. While typically seen only during migration here in Lansing, I was accustomed to having them throughout the breeding season in the area where I grew up—the hills of south-western New York. Last summer my son and I traveled through Cook Forest in Pennsylvania, which isn’t all that far from my home town. We were treated to hearing many of these gorgeous birds calling from the huge forests trees. They really were singing about the TALL trees there.
Cook Forest is one of my all time favorite places. It boasts large tracts of forest that have never been logged, and the scale of those woods is unbelievable. In addition to gorgeous trees, fern, fungus and loads of great birds, it is a fantastic place to tip rocks and look for salamanders. That activity makes me feel like I’m 8 years old. You never know what treasures you’ll find beneath rocks and logs!
Our spring trip was the first time I’d been to Cook Forest without my wife, Liesl. While Tim and I had a fantastic time, it just wasn’t the same. Some places are even more fun when shared. I really need to get my brother Ted out there with his camera gear!
Please contact me if you’re interested in buying the original watercolor or a print of this painting. Some of my work is also available for licensing.
Female Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle Warbler) Transparent Watercolor and Time-lapse Video
I tried not to overwork this painting and wanted to leave things a bit looser on the bird than I might normally do. My photo reference from a trip to Ohio was contrasty. I ended up softening the lighting a lot.
I decided that female Yellow-rumps are harder to paint than the males… well at least if you are reinventing the lighting of the entire scene! As I looked at tons of my photos of female yellow-rumps, the more I became aware at how much variety their mid-tone colors seem to take on. Sometimes it looks soft brown, and sometimes it looks blue-gray or olive-tinted. I was as sick as a dog while working on this painting. In the end, I just decided to have fun with it and make the bird work with the background, rather than sweating out the most realistic possible color of the bird.
Please contact me if you’re interested in buying the original watercolor or a print of this painting. Some of my work is also available for licensing.
Dark-eyed Junco Transparent Watercolor and Time-lapse Video
Although Dark-eyed Juncos are abundant in Michigan, I never got around to painting one until now. I have taken plenty of reference photos but always struggled with how to show off these fairly “drab” birds. Their colors are not exactly thrilling when compared with something like a Painted Bunting, but they are spectacularly beautiful in their simplicity. Those subtle grays, soft browns and whites, with a barely pink bill are super-attractive, but figuring out how to best showcase that is tough.
After a lot of indecision, I thought it might be best to simplify the scene so the bird is the center of attraction. I usually try not to paint just a “bird on a stick,” as I call it, but in this case it seemed like a good way to put the focus on the bird and to keep it from competing with a busy background. Using my sketch, I did a bunch of quick color studies in Photoshop. I settled on a gray purple-pink-white fade. Once I was washing in the watercolor, I went with a more saturated purple-blue and pink, which I though would make the grays and tans of the bird pop more.
Other than the opaque white spatter snowflakes, this was all transparent watercolor. Spritzing in the snow at the end is a little stressful. I always wonder if I’m going to ruin an otherwise fine painting with a bad blob or two of paint. There is only so controlled you can get when you are flicking paint off an old toothbrush with your thumb! I got in the habit of scanning in the painting before the snow, just in case I ruin it.
Please contact me if you’re interested in buying the original watercolor or a print of this painting. Some of my work is also available for licensing.
Yellow-rumped Warbler (Myrtle Warbler) Transparent Watercolor and Time-lapse Video
It’s funny that even after painting birds for decades, there are some more common species that I just never got around to painting. Yellow-rumped Warblers are easy to find here in Michigan during migration, but this is my first time painting one. I never had taken the right photo reference. Last year’s fall family birding trip to northern Ohio paid off with an unbelievable volume of “butter bums” that posed for dozens and dozens of photos. You may see more before long.
I usually try to do something different to stretch my skills on each painting. On this one I was trying to use a more subdued color palette in the background and to bring in some clouds. I am typically attracted to more saturated colors and contrast, so holding things back a notch and trying to be more subtle was hard.
Please contact me if you’re interested in buying the original watercolor or a print of this painting. Some of my work is also available for licensing.
Magnolia Warbler: Transparent Watercolor and Time-lapse Video
Who doesn’t like Magnolia Warblers?! I can’t imagine anyone who has seen one of these magnificent creatures not thinking they are spectacular. I have no recollection of the first Magnolia Warbler that I saw, but every time I get them in the binoculars, I still get excited. They aren’t that uncommon, but they are stunning little birds. That striking yellow-black combo with white highlights is about as pretty as it gets.
I’ve painted them twice before. The first was ages ago, a lone bird on a lichen-spotted Hawthorn branch. More recently, I included five Magnolia Warblers in a large watercolor of many bird species.
Please contact me if you’re interested in buying the original watercolor or a print of this or any other painting. Some of my work is also available for licensing.
Great Black Digger Wasp: Transparent Watercolor and Time-lapse Video
When I was a kid, I was inadvertently trained to be a bit fearful of all wasps, bees and hornets. Over the years I’ve learned that most are pretty tolerant of humans, and if you approach them carefully, they leave you alone. When getting macro photos, especially with extension tubes, you have to be super close, and I’ve never been stung when photographing them. Wasps and hornets do pack a potent sting, and I’ve gotten “tagged” many times when I’ve been on a bike, and one has flown into my helmet, shirt or pant leg! As for yellow jackets, I give them a seriously wide berth. They seem to be born (hatch) angry.
These digger wasps are important pollinators and controllers of insect populations. In order to feed their young, adult wasps collect insects like grasshoppers and katydids, stinging them multiple times to paralyze them, and then laying an egg on each one. Once hatched, the developing wasp eats the victim. It sounds like something from a Sci-Fi flick. Often birds such as Gray Catbirds and House Sparrows will steal the wasp’s prey for themselves.
Whenever I do a painting of an insect that isn’t a butterfly, dragonfly, bumble bee or one of the other rare “glam” insects, I figure most people will either have no interest or be repulsed by it. That’s ok. These paintings are pretty much for my own interest and entertainment. If anyone else happens to admire them, great! They are my kind of people. Not everyone appreciates a jumping spider or wasp, but I sure love them!
The photos I took as reference for these had a green background that didn’t really make the wasp stand out. After some thumbnail tests in Photoshop, I decided to render the background on a faded gradient from pink to a subdued yellow from the bottom flowers.
Please contact me if you’re interested in buying the original watercolor or a print of this painting. Some of my work is also available for licensing.
Ruby-crowned Kinglet: Transparent Watercolor
For some reason it took me a long time to get around to painting a Ruby-crowned Kinglet. I’ve done Golden-crowned a few times. I think it just took a while to get the photos to work from. Last fall we went on a family birding trip to northern Ohio for migration, and these little birds were everywhere that weekend. The numbers were staggering!
I think this was also the first time I painted loads of fall leaves with all sorts of imperfections.
Please contact me if you’re interested in buying the original watercolor or a print of this painting. Some of my work is also available for licensing.
Sanderling and Sand Dollar: Transparent Watercolor and Time-lapse Video
This painting brings back good memories of a trip to Sanibel Island in Florida with my brother Ted. I was standing right next to him when I got the photo reference for this painting. Being the master photographer that he is, Ted probably has a few dozen better images than the ones I worked from. I took three photography courses while in art school as an undergrad and graduate art student. The classes were good, but I still say that at least 90% of my photographic knowledge comes from Ted. I also learned a ton from my housemate in grad school, Dan. While my photo classes were good, Ted and Dan have always had the ability to tell me exactly what I needed to know and how to practically apply that information.
In my photos from Sanibel, the beach was covered with tons of Sanderlings, with shell debris around many of them. I wanted to include a sand dollar in the painting because Ted and I found a whopper of one on the beach one morning.
Although this is a fairly straightforward composition, it was a lot of fun to work on. I wanted to hold back on the detail for a change and spritzed in much of the sand with an old toothbrush—a must have tool for every watercolor painter!
Please contact me if you’re interested in buying the original watercolor or a print of this painting. Some of my work is also available for licensing.