When I was in grad school, I saw my first Black-crowned Night Heron during a trip to Everglades National Park. Until then, I didn’t realize I had been missing out on a spectacularly beautiful bird. You just didn’t run into them much in western New York, where I spent most of my youth. Since then, I’ve gotten night herons in many states. In our part of Michigan, they are infrequent visitors and an exciting find.
I’ve gotten to paint Yellow-crowned Night Herons a few times, but this was my first painting of the Black-crowned. How does that happen?! When I was in art school, I did a colored pencil piece of one, but that is as close as I’ve come. This painting was done from photos that I took on a photo trip to Orlando Wetlands with my brother Ted. Neither of us had been there before. It really is a fantastic location for birds and other wildlife. I hope to go back!
This painting is done on Kilimanjaro 140 lb cold-pressed paper. I was given a block of the paper years ago, and it sat unused because I typically preferred super-smooth textured hot-press papers. I ran out of my usual Arches 140 lb hot-press paper and decided to give the cold-press paper a try. By the time I hit 19 paintings on Kilimanjaro paper, I was impressed. It’s a good surface to work on. It takes washes much easier than hot-pressed papers and—unlike a lot of cold-pressed papers—isn’t excessively bumpy. The heavy texture on a lot of cold pressed papers gets in the way of developing a lot of detail. Down to the last sheet and needing to restock, I decided to “officially” switch over to using Kilimanjaro, only to discover that it’s no longer being made. Bummer!
