"Soft As Snow"
Original watercolour by Jean Haines
It's that time of year when most artists start thinking about painting their Christmas cards if they need to get them printed. And I am way behind in this matter. I have been invited to show some bird paintings in watercolour in a gallery Christmas Exhibition this year. So I started my bird collection with this small robin today.
We have a robin that visits our garden regularly. In fact one used to regularly come into our cottage for food. Which I wasn't too happy about but he seemed house trained as he never left any messages for me to clear up after his visits. Thankfully!
Our robin in our cottage kitchen. A regular visitor!
Our robin in our garden. A sweet little bird with beautiful bird song.
My photographs of our robin are mainly against green backgrounds so I have made my todays' painting of one up. Using my own resource photo but adding snow to the branch the sweet little bird is sitting on. I was going to add a background but I love the painting just as it is. So I am going to take my own advise of stopping painting long before you think your painting is finished and start a new piece.
What I really wanted to share in this blog post is the wonderful feathering effect you can achieve with watercolour if you simply allow the colours to fuse together minus the use of a hair dryer. Just look at the lovely markings below in the close up of my robin painting before the branch was added.This effect is created using Cadmium shades. The cadmium pigments are so bossy that they fight for attention pushing each other out of the way. This robins chest was painted using Cadmium Yellow and adding Cadmium Orange to that area whilst the first application of colour is still wet. If you are reading my books or watching my DVDs try experimenting with your warm up washes with these two colours on damp paper to see what happens. You might be amazed!
"Rocky Robin",
Cute in its unfinished stage.
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I share my techniques in all of my books and DVDs but my latest DVD film about painting animals in watercolour is possibly the best for learning how to paint subjects with eyes!
More details via this link
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