JTMB
Well-known member
Hi everyone,
Although I signed up on this site almost a year ago, I hadn't been active before. Colleen suggested I come over here since I've just started to do birds from life. So here goes.
A quick intro - I 'retired' in March of 2008 and started doing 2-D art (for the first time ever except playing music and some serious photography) about two years ago, thinking I couldn't draw or paint. I'm now doing art as the main focus of my life, along with birding (I've got a 'master birder' certification through Seattle Audubon) and playing mandolin with an acoustic roots trio.
My focus in art is landscape and nature, and I'm going more and more in the direction of birds. I know there are some fabulous bird artists on this site, and I hope even a little bit of that rubs off on me.
I want to work toward getting more of the 'essence' of birds, since I am not interested in photorealism (I lack the patience :-O) while keeping enough info in the images for an ID in most cases anyway.
Here are a couple of water-media pieces I've done (not having uploaded on the site before, here's hoping it goes ok). Each of these is done from a photo I took while birding. The American Kestrel and Savannah Sparrow are watercolor, and about 9x12 inches. The Belted Kingfisher is gouache in a Moleskine watercolor sketchbook, about 5.5 x 8.5 inches. (I promise to learn metric measurements for future posts!)
And these are two dry media (Polychromos colored pencil) sketches - again from photos that I took - of a female Red-winged Blackbird and a juvenile Green Heron. Both of these are done in a Moleskine sketchbook.
All comments and critiques are welcome. I'm looking forward to participating in the forum!
Although I signed up on this site almost a year ago, I hadn't been active before. Colleen suggested I come over here since I've just started to do birds from life. So here goes.
A quick intro - I 'retired' in March of 2008 and started doing 2-D art (for the first time ever except playing music and some serious photography) about two years ago, thinking I couldn't draw or paint. I'm now doing art as the main focus of my life, along with birding (I've got a 'master birder' certification through Seattle Audubon) and playing mandolin with an acoustic roots trio.
My focus in art is landscape and nature, and I'm going more and more in the direction of birds. I know there are some fabulous bird artists on this site, and I hope even a little bit of that rubs off on me.
I want to work toward getting more of the 'essence' of birds, since I am not interested in photorealism (I lack the patience :-O) while keeping enough info in the images for an ID in most cases anyway.
Here are a couple of water-media pieces I've done (not having uploaded on the site before, here's hoping it goes ok). Each of these is done from a photo I took while birding. The American Kestrel and Savannah Sparrow are watercolor, and about 9x12 inches. The Belted Kingfisher is gouache in a Moleskine watercolor sketchbook, about 5.5 x 8.5 inches. (I promise to learn metric measurements for future posts!)
And these are two dry media (Polychromos colored pencil) sketches - again from photos that I took - of a female Red-winged Blackbird and a juvenile Green Heron. Both of these are done in a Moleskine sketchbook.
All comments and critiques are welcome. I'm looking forward to participating in the forum!
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