After a bigger, more complicated, 9×24-inch watercolor painting of Fancy Goldfish, I was in the mood for a smaller, quicker option. After looking through some sketches, I settled on this diving immature Brown Pelican. I took my reference images on a photography trip to Florida with my brother Ted. I think we have a thousand near-duplicate frames, as we were often shooting right next to each other. One place that gets a high yield of flying birds is the Sanibel Fishing pier near the Pt. Ybel Lighthouse. In addition to plenty of great wading birds, we were treated to many diving Brown Pelicans, as well as various terns and gulls. While the poor fish were being harvested from above by the birds, they were being chased to the surface by several dolphins below. Some days there is no safe place to hide, I guess! Though unlucky for the fish, it made for some great photos.
My shots were taken mid-afternoon and had pretty harsh lighting, a blue sky background and some blurred-out hotels from across the Sanibel causeway. While I liked the pose of the bird, the background pretty much destroyed the overall image. I thought warming up the sky with some sunset colors would work well with the browns of the bird. Unfortunately, the brown-against-blue combo made the bird look a bit sickly, with more of a green bias to the grey browns. I did a quick test in Photoshop of the colors I was considering before investing in the watercolor. Although the washes go down pretty quickly, frisketing the bird takes a bit of time, and I didn’t want to waste time or paper if the idea wasn’t going to work. In the end I was really happy with the background reinvention.
My wife has a high school friend who was a syndicated cartoonist with a ton of funny content. He penned At The Zü for a number of years. A favorite strip of mine had two animals looking at a sunset talking about how beautiful the colors were. After a pause one said to the other something along the lines of, “Yeah, but if you put those same colors on a T-shirt, people would say it was tacky!” I’m sure his wording was better, but you get the idea. There is a lot of truth to that!
Please contact me if you’re interested in buying the original or a print of this painting. Some of my work is also available for licensing.
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