Sorry for the delay in posting new material. It has been a crazy few months. Medical illustration and animation projects have been keeping me super busy. No worries—I have kept up with my watercolor paintings. I just fell WAY behind on posting work here, on YouTube and Instagram. Something had to be sacrificed, and I’d rather spend the time painting than writing posts, scanning, editing video and posting. Although this painting is being uploaded at the perfect time for spring migration, it was actually created in the dead of winter.
I can’t remember the last time I painted the same species as the main subject of two consecutive paintings. A Chestnut-sided Warbler is certainly worthy of back-to-back efforts. I seldom render birds face on because they can look strange or grumpy. At the same time, why not do something out of the ordinary? Those typical side views can get a bit predictable. A bird staring right in your face, well… that commands attention! This isn’t a popular angle for rendering birds because it tends to flatten out the beak. I’ve only used this view on a handful of occasions. One the plus side this also makes them look quite human. Sometimes looking grumpy, other times cute. This guy certainly morphed into an almost perfectly spherical shape.
Over the past year I’ve been working on a few different things with my watercolors. Getting detail isn’t a problem for me. I’ve really been trying to hone my abilities to create convincing depth of field, selective focus and convincing lighting. Finding a good balance between detail and hard edges versus soft and fuzzy is hard. I’m definitely feeling more comfortable now working into and out of the detail in backgrounds—from highly detailed to more suggestive.
It was a fantastic winter with some absolutely stunning snows. We enjoyed a Pileated Woodpecker’s almost daily visits to the suet feeders outside our kitchen window. Other treats were Evening Grosbeaks, Purple Finch, Common Redpolls and Red-breasted Nuthatches. We live on the northern end of the Carolina Wren’s range. Over the past few years we have had a pair overwintering and then nesting in our yard. We really worry about them when the cold and snowy weather hit, and keep our feeder stocked up with peanuts for them. They made it through winter again but chose to nest elsewhere. While we had great birds and beautiful snows, it has been nice to welcome “our” orioles, catbirds, warblers and blossoms back to the Michigan landscape!
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