A few neotropic bird paintings (2 Viewers)

[BryanP]

Once again amazing art. It's funny I watched your video and just watched the lines pop up on the screen. I'm still old school, and just use my pens for the most part and pencils and my beat up sketchpad. Spending a lot of time field sketching .l love the challenge of time vs frantic sketching. This is complete meditation for myself. That is the Best, plus watching the wacky things birds do. Once again amazing art..

Thanks Swampy Sam,
I get the time vs frantic sketching comment, My first life drawing master had us do many many 5 second posed drawings of the model. Sure kept us on our toes!
I was old school materials for 40 years but full time travelling on a small sailboat required I adapt to alternatives, hence the iPad.

Folks are sometimes a little misled by how Procreate records strokes on the iPad (Procreate being my drawing app of choice). If I draw a long and elaborate scribble without ever lifting the pencil off the screen Procreate records and counts that whole scribble as a single stroke. Very deceiving at times when watching a process vid.

To hopefully clear things up here’s a video and a screen record of the actual drawing process.
The first video is of the beginning minutes of the Brown-violet Ear drawing.
the second is a screen recording of the Black-crested Coquette painting. They’ve been speeded up to reduce upload file size. Both vids are little bit better than Procreate’s process vids for showing actual work
Apart from the tactile differences and the backlit screen the act of drawing is the same comfortable process I’ve been familiar with for those 40 years I mentioned earlier.

As committed as I am to to working on the iPad the screen brightness problem makes it a poor choice for outdoor field work. I’ve done it but I always have to find a shady spot to do the drawing, not fun. Remarkable makes an e-ink drawing tablet that is not backlit and it may be a better choice than the iPad for sketching outdoors. It’s only monochromatic so has its own real world limitations as well.
A traditional sketch book, pencils and watercolours are still the best for field work.
Cheers!
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[MiddleRiver]

WOW
Beautiful!

 

[Swampy Sam]

Ahhh... Now that looks more familiar.

 

[Julian H]

As a designer, I need to invest some time getting to grips with digital painting. I just started painting with watercolor two years ago and now I have to jump on another medium.

These are terrific and a great example of how technology is expanding outlr creativity. Smashing work Bryan!

 

[BryanP]

Beautiful! I like your bold, iridescent color palette! Only try to avoid making heads too big.

Thanks Jurek,
I’m compelled to keep this kind of advice in mind. I don’t work from any one photo for these paintings. I “invent’ the pose and proportions from a blank page which increases the chances for making colour and proportion mistakes.
This is why I’m absolutely reliant on as many ornithologists as are willing to give me advice. Another great source for that kind of advice are the local hardcore birding guides. I like how they don’t hold back 😉

Beautifully rendered.

thanks Lisa W!

WOW
Beautiful!

Thank you MiddleRiver!

As a designer, I need to invest some time getting to grips with digital painting. I just started painting with watercolor two years ago and now I have to jump on another medium.

These are terrific and a great example of how technology is expanding outlr creativity. Smashing work Bryan!

Thanks Julian.
Working with traditional mediums for so long and that don’t get in the way is something I’m used too. This meant I had high and unreasonable expectations for digital art.
It wasn’t until the iPad came along with its pencil lag of less than 9 millisecond and simple user interface that I made the change in a substantive way. After all those years of traditional painting it was a pleasure to find drawing on the iPad was fairly straightforward.

I’ve handed other old dog artists the iPad, showed them where the pencil, eraser and colour tools are and had them up and drawing cool stuff in five minutes. Sure there’s more in depth tools built into the drawing apps but who cares, all the fancy stuff can wait forever if it means the joy of drawing is front and center.

Anyway, thanks again.

 

[Scarlet macaw lover]

You do digital art so well ^^