My project for course: Artistic Watercolor Techniques for Illustrating Birds

Here is my final project painting with a few notes on the process.

Although I chose to paint different birds I really liked Sarah’s arrangement so I decided to mimic it by finding photographs of two birds that are facing away from the viewer and two that are facing to the side. I actually only have two species of dove in this painting. One is a Blue-headed wood dove and the other a Blue-eyed ground dove. I chose these because of their similar, complementary, and almost yin-yang arranged colors and positioned them alternately in Photoshop.

Now, since I have a tendency to focus on details and paint more realistically using a 00 brush I tried to forget how I usually work and I watched Sara’s process very closely. I realized she spent about half an hour on each bird so I tried to do the same. Instead of using a 00 brush I used a size 2. Because of the similarity of colors in both bird species I painted all of the birds simultaneously meaning I started from left to right applying the lightest colors on all four, and then repeated the process applying medium and dark colors on all four. Another thing that I did differently was that I saved the blending for the very end. Lastly, instead of a black I used a Sepia and Brown Pigma Micron 0.5 pen for the branch since these colors match the colors in my birds. For the splashes I used a size 10 brush and finally I added some white gouache to the eyes and feathers.

Photographic reference:
Top left: Blue-eyed ground dove © Nina Wenóli
Top right: Blue-headed wood dove © Jieles van Baalen
Bottom left: Blue-eyed ground dove © Bruno Rennó
Bottom Right: Blue-headed wood dove © Jim Frazee

Color palette (Winsor and Newton Cotman 24 set):
Cerulean Blue, Cobalt Blue, Intense Blue
Cadmium Orange Hue, Cadmium Red, Raw Umber, Burnt Sienna, Indian Red, Burnt Umber
Purple Lake, Payne's Gray