This week I painted a Gold and Blue Macaw. They are really beautiful birds and often have the most loving and friendly personalities.
I began with a sketch…
Then I added some masking fluid to the face area…
Next I laid down some basic light coloured washes. I aimed their tone to be the brightest of all of the tones in each area. That way I could layer other washes on top and gradually pick up my mid-range and dark areas…
Once this was done I got down to rendering each surface with progressively darker washes and then adding details (my favourite part of any painting!)
Here’s the final picture…
I quite like his yellow under feathers and head, but if I were going to do this again I would work on my portrayal of his left wing. It just doesn’t work as well as I’d hoped in my mind’s eye.
I love reptiles. They are such fascinating creatures. One day I would love to keep one as a pet. I’d probably get a Crested Gecko because they are so lovely to interact with, you can keep them in a live plant vivarium and they’re suitable for first time reptile keepers.
(This photo is by Jazium and is shared under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International.)
My favourite pet later on would be a chameleon, probably a Panther Chameleon or a Veiled Chameleon but that would have to wait until I’m more experienced with reptiles as the husbandry is more demanding. One creature I would never want to keep though, is a crocodile, even a small one! They are amazing creatures but have a deservedly fierce and scary reputation.
I made a sketch of one one evening on basic copy paper and liked the way it turned out so I decided to make a painting.
Here’s the copy paper ink sketch…
I made another, more careful sketch of this in graphite on watercolour paper…
Then I began painting in gouache. Because light paint can go over dark paint with gouache I started with the background. I used viridian, permanent green middle and lamp black to make my background. I was thinking of the Rio Negro, the largest tributary of the Amazon and the largest black water river in the world.
Here’s the background…
Next I added a light wash of gouache to map out my light and dark areas. It was more to get this information into my mind than to affect the final painting…
Then I painted my crocodile with basic shapes…
Once this stage was mapped out I then went to work on the detail, further defining my shapes and adding textures and specular reflections. I ended up re-doing the eye three times but it was worth it, because the eye of this croc has an amazing lime-green colour. Here’s my final painting…
This week I wanted a chance to play with watercolour. Butterflies are very easy watercolour subjects so I decided to have a go…
I began with a fairly careful sketch. It was nothing too involved, but I wanted the wings to be balanced and basically accurate to their natural shape.
Then I began to paint. I had my plan for this worked out in my head beforehand and originally intended to photograph each stage.
The plan was…
Add wet in wet gradients of cadmium yellow deep (with a touch of cadmium scarlet) across the wings.
Paint, wet on dry, with a full strength version of the same colour to add veins and other details.
Paint the wing tips, wet on dry, in mix of ivory black and raw umber.
Paint wet in wet gradients of the the same colour.
Paint the details of the body.
However, I got too absorbed to think about the camera and ended up painting the whole thing. Apologies for no process pictures.
It was a really enjoyable painting to work on. Here’s the final picture…
It was done on watercolour paper just under A4 size using W&N professional watercolour paints.
As you can see, I decided to add a shadow after completing my plan. I used a mix of darkish blues which I had left on my palette from another painting session. I thought it would work OK since blues contrast oranges well. (They’re my favourite complementary colour pairing.) One day I’d like to have a go at using an airbrush to lay down a shadow. It seems like the ideal tool for the job but I’ve never used one before. Perhaps I’ll get one and give it a go!
PS: If anyone knows the species of this butterfly I would love to know. I did use reference and, although I didn’t interpret it exactly, the wing colours are in the right places.
This week I played around with a simple illustration of Kodama (tree Spirits/Gods from Japanese folklore) sitting in the the shade of a small Nasturtium plant (Genus: Tropaeolum). My original intention with this illustration was to add some dotted shading over the top with black pigma micron pens . However, when I tried this out in Photoshop to see if it would work it seemed too dark and definite. While I was playing around thinking what to do next, I ran a photoshop filter over the painting (I was playing with the idea of a new background). Anyway, the filter made the foreground look just how I wanted it. So I dumped the new background idea, saved the file and printed it off.
Here’s the original painting before any digital changes…
And here’s the finished illustration as I prefer it with the filter on…
I have always loved the idea of Kodama since I first came across them in Miyazaki’s beautiful film Princess Mononoke.
Film Poster for Theatrical Release in Japan – from Wikipedia
By personifying the spirit of living things like trees, Japanese folk tales, very gently, seem to point out that all living things are valuable and important as part of the whole. In the past and even today, in Japan the idea of Kodama has protected special trees in various places from removal. Whereas in the UK, local people can write to officials, get the press involved, put up huge banners across trees we would like to keep, but these wishes are ignored in favour of a marginally bigger car park.
As far as I understand it, Kodama are a form of Kami, which are said to be the divinities or sacred essences of many different things like, rivers, mountains, trees and animals. Shinto, which ritualises Kami worship (including the worship of some ancestors), is the indigenous religion of Japan and is still practiced by 80% of Japan’s population although the way Japanese people approach religion is very different from people in the west, being more practical and syncretic and less concerned with membership.
My feeling as I read up on this subject, is that Shinto has given the Japanese people an understanding of, and reverence for, nature that is beautiful. Many of Miyazaki’s films like Princess Mononoke, Naussica of the Valley of the Wind and My Neighbour Totoro resonate with this way of looking at the world. I think I prefer to see the world the same way.
jo fox - adventures in art 