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Alan Dalton-Birdart from the Basement (1 Viewer)

A few hours yesterday, followed by a full day today working on this piece..

Black Throated Diver-acrylic on canvas
65cmx65cm

A painting that has long been in my mind, this one. The foreground bird is straight from my sketchbook, the other a fiction of sorts in that I simply penciled it in where I needed it for the composition. My earlier mistakes with painting this species saw me adding the strong darks early on, whilst a limited palette was employed. If I was only to paint one species alone, it might well be this one, these birds have it all...
 

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A small piece here, a work in progress, this one also directly from my sketchbook. I quickly sketched it in grey coloring pencil and blocked some colour in whilst I was waiting for paint to dry on the above canvas of the divers. As such, something of an afterthought and I'm not sure about the bird not being completely within the frame, though I think it's worthy of a little further attention...

The canvas is about 35cmx35cm

Minus 16 degrees here today, first real deep chill of the winter!
 

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Hi Alan!

Congrats on the new studio! The quality of the work you've produced from it is outstanding. The Great Gray Owl is my favorite - I have yet to see one in the wild, despite multiple trips to do so.
 
I prefer the Great Grey Matt ;)

Great to've found a studio like this Al......prob could do with something like that myself to get out of this bloody unable-to-be-bothered-to-paint phase I'm currently stuck in: ideas nil, motivation nil. Working around others does get the creative juices flowing again....

Hi Adam,
I can certainly recommend trying it. For me, working at home just doesn't work. I need to get out of the house and need that workspace. At home it's to easy to start after a cup of tea, turn on the tv or computer, get too comfortable on the couch. Even if we had a bigger place with a spare room, getting out of my living space seems to flip a switch for me, it feels like a work environment on arrival and I'm soon immersed in the painting..
It's good of course to see the progress of the other pieces being worked on around me. One of the guys had a frustrating day today with a portrait he's been on for a little too long and there was a mini conference over it.
It took me a long time to find a place with a reasonable monthly rent, the studio here was begun by eight art students some years ago and has rolled on from there. Someone leaves and the space is taken by someone else. It's a basement apartment shared by eight people for painting, which makes it affordable to me.
I've heard of government sponsored studios here, but there was much form filling and need of contacts and references etc. I got a bit bogged down along that route and decided a communal share was the way forward for me. Naturally, everyone is different and what works for one does not necessarily work for another..
 
A small piece here, a work in progress, this one also directly from my sketchbook. I quickly sketched it in grey coloring pencil and blocked some colour in whilst I was waiting for paint to dry on the above canvas of the divers. As such, something of an afterthought and I'm not sure about the bird not being completely within the frame, though I think it's worthy of a little further attention...

The canvas is about 35cmx35cm

Minus 16 degrees here today, first real deep chill of the winter!

Intriguing piece here Alan. It will be nice to see how it develops. So far those divers are by far my favorite. Very nicely done.
 
Hi Alan!

Congrats on the new studio! The quality of the work you've produced from it is outstanding. The Great Gray Owl is my favorite - I have yet to see one in the wild, despite multiple trips to do so.


Hi John,

Not sure what is happening stateside, though here in Scandinavia there has been an incredible influx of Great Grey Owls, which started in late summer 2011. That summer was a record rodent year, owls bred prolifically and many even raised second broods. The inevitable crash in rodent numbers saw a huge southward movement of Great Grey Owl(predominently young birds) through the winter of 2011/12 and many birds are still around now, moving around out of the normal range, all probably birds born in 2011. Not sure if these owl irruptions are mirrored in the same years on your side of the pond?
Strangely, this autumn and winter has seen a Hawk Owl invasion, a year later. These birds were not so plentiful last year, though a few were around, nothing like the present invasion though.
 
Here in the Pacific Northwest (Washington state), we are having our second irruption year for Snowy Owls. Last year saw very high numbers of Snowies in the winter of 2011-2012. Sometimes historically, there is an 'echo flight' the following winter - but usually with lesser numbers of birds. This year so far seems to be as many birds as last year.

Great Grays here are a different issue - to my knowledge they don't really have irruption years like Snowies. They are found - sometimes, rarely - in the far north central and northeastern part of our state. Same thing with Northern Hawk Owls - they are not even annual.
 
A couple of compositional biro drawings here which will become paintings. The first, from Landsort this autumn, which I will tackle this week. The second Waxwing piece, my first effort at a large comp which may be expanded horizontally to include more birds. This inspired by the sight of 100 plus birds near home. A lot of these birds around right now, though mist admit its tempting to add another species or two, Pine Grosbeak and Fieldfare foremost among them..
 

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Here's the other, working off the iPhone right now, not allowing multiple images on the same post...
My process has had to change, been working a lot of late in the bar, xmas parties etc, the minus conditions also mean little hope of fieldwork either and these sketches are coming straight out of my head. Have cleared next week though and will spend it in the studio. Have a commission to do, otherwise I'm free. Happily two commissions have resulted in the studio being paid for until the end of April, a totally unexpected result...
 

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good all round - studio space, commissions, crests and pecks . . . oh, and waxwings. There's a definite surge forward in all of this - fantastico!
 
This one just finished, a commission piece..

Evening tones, a Blackbird male in song..
 

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This one is fantastic Alan!
I love the way you controlled and rendered the various tones on a black bird!
Wonderful!

Paschalis
 
This one is fantastic Alan!
I love the way you controlled and rendered the various tones on a black bird!
Wonderful!

Paschalis

Me too. I'm painting a little blackbird at the moment so I know the challenges only too well. Brave sky, deftly done too.

Mike
 
Thanks for the kind words guys. As with many commisions, there was a specific request for this painting. I was given a photo of the top of a lampost and asked if I could paint a singing Blackbird on it. The couple have a resident Blackbird which sings from that point every evening, which they both enjoy listening to. Hardly a very exciting composition though and I struggled to come up with a way of making the image interesting. The over the top sky was my solution in a way, as there was little I could do with the 'bird on a post' really. You would not come across such a sky naturally, either in colour or cloud formation, it was just an excuse to use some nice, vivid colour, which has given me food for thought regarding pallette use...
Happily the painting was very well received by a friend, as a gift for his birthday which is always nice....
 
Thanks for the kind words guys. As with many commisions, there was a specific request for this painting. I was given a photo of the top of a lampost and asked if I could paint a singing Blackbird on it. The couple have a resident Blackbird which sings from that point every evening, which they both enjoy listening to. Hardly a very exciting composition though and I struggled to come up with a way of making the image interesting. The over the top sky was my solution in a way, as there was little I could do with the 'bird on a post' really. You would not come across such a sky naturally, either in colour or cloud formation, it was just an excuse to use some nice, vivid colour, which has given me food for thought regarding pallette use...
Happily the painting was very well received by a friend, as a gift for his birthday which is always nice....

I much enjoy the painting and the explanation. I don't know if I'd noticed the sky all that much until you mentioned it. Now I do see the amount of creativity in it.
 
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