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Wings Over Winecountry, Colleen's place (1 Viewer)

That pastel work is really impressive Colleen. Not a medium I've used since a kid and they always broke and got all over the furniture!
 
yes - you're seeing and sketching plenty of interesting poses here - and the pastel is superb.

Nick took the words from my mouth! Working from photo's certainly gives you an advantage when next sketching in the field, it gets your hand working in a certain way which becomes like a muscle memory, allowing for easier movement observing the living birds. (I hope that makes sense!)

Mike
 
Mike that's exactly what I was hoping for, glad you confrimed it.
Deborah, they still break, and fall and get stepped on, but I'm the Mom now and I don't worry about it :)
Thank you Nick
Ed, I cut a bit of paper and have twisted it to match the photo so hopefully I'll understand the forms more, but I'd love to have a video of them in flight to really see what's happening, I'm considering it is a flat plane in space affected by the air pressure but have a long way to go yet.
 
back at the tree for a quick look today around noon. I still can't draw much from life but I am seeing more detail esp when both upper and lower side of wing shows at once,ie the "twist" Ed spoke of.
I did manage one drawing I couldn't have done last week

Cattle egrets ( maybe what you call little egrets?) are really abundant now that most of the big guys are gone...here is a shot I loved, they are the punk rockers of the egret tree.
 

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Great photo! This is a snowy egret - very similar to our little egrets, but a different species. Cattle egrets are called the same both sides of the pond.
 
Thanks Nick, could you explain how to tell the difference....is it the feet? I read my Sibley, but still am confused.
 
OK Nick or someone would you see if I have this straight now.

Great Egrets, big, over here have yellow and orange beaks, with a tip of dark on the end of the upper beak, have dark bluish grey legs and feet, the area of the lore(whatever you call that part from beak to eye) is yellow or blue in breeding season

Snowy Egrets, sort of like Little egret over there, have black beaks, and long black legs with yellow feet, profuse breeding feathers.

Cattle egret, about same size as snowy(?)but have a shorter neck, and reddish brown breeding feathers( I thought it was dirt :-O) in the roost I can't tell the difference yet, unless the breeding feathers are on.....so what other field marks can I look for, they seem the same size as the snowys, and there are so many young that are small too. They have shorter legs in flight, and a strong yellow orange beak.

Please add or correct this as needed...Thanks so much. I'll send you a nice cold bottle of virtual Dehlinger chard for the help.
 
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I went to the egret tree in the moonlight last night, however it's position in relation to the moon put it all in shadow, the sodium street lights mess things up, and the birds were all deep in the leaves, so that was a bust, but I did check out the colors in the sky and at early moonrise, just after twilight, my blues are not far off....

One of the little juve bc night herons was flatter than a piece of cardboard, I was worried 2 days ago when I saw him foraging under the tree right in the street. I've had to put sentimentality away when at the trees, so many don't make it. I read 75 % of the young raised this year will not make it to one year old. The crows and ants get fed is one way to see it I guess.
 
Still trying to make friends with watercolor. :eek!:
The night herons are the 3rd species in the tree, they squawk like chickens at sunset, a young juve has taken to the bushes by the house as it can't fly up to the tree. So worried he spends time in the street and is trying to find stuff on the ground to eat, but he's too wiley for me to catch...I'm concerned about him but there's nothing I can do

these are the first sketches I tried, the legs aren't right yet...their feet are SO big
 

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the legs can be looked at later - these are excellent solid shapes you've given the birds. A good trick when deciding where the legs are placed is to imagine where the pelvis is, go up to the knee (which is hidden under the feathers), back down to the ankle, which is what we all think is the backward-facing knee, and then in most cases, try and ignore the feet!
 
Still trying to make friends with watercolor. :eek!:
The night herons are the 3rd species in the tree, they squawk like chickens at sunset, a young juve has taken to the bushes by the house as it can't fly up to the tree. So worried he spends time in the street and is trying to find stuff on the ground to eat, but he's too wiley for me to catch...I'm concerned about him but there's nothing I can do

these are the first sketches I tried, the legs aren't right yet...their feet are SO big

Sometimes watercolor just doesn't seem to want to make friends does it..........

I've been going through the same thing for last couple of years. But the other comments are right: you've gotten a very good start with the overall shapes. I have the same problem of making sure I get the legs where they should be.

But for me watercolor is so rich with possibilities that I struggle along with its occasional unfriendliness. Every once in a while something turns out right and that convinces me to keep going. And of course there are plenty of examples on this forum of just how wonderful it can be. That's a great incentive.
 
Excellent job with the nigh-herons, Colleen -- there are always some great shapes to be found in the squat-looking birds.
 
Cor - some folk are never happy! ;)
These herons are really nicely done and for a so-called non-watercolourist the colours and blends are remarkable, The drawings capture the essence of the bird and I suppose that's what we're all about, really. Ok - the legs have gone a tad 'blobby' in places, but that's not to detract from the original drawing which has them in more or less the right places, with exactly the right gesture. You'll soon be making swift and elegant sweeps of the sable, the colour behaving like a sheepdog in its wake.
Another huge leap forward in your pursuit.
 
Thanks Nick I think for a while I'll just draw in the inner part to see if it helps, I've taken apart the dead juve I found, and let the whole leg dry in the sun so I could see how it looks.

Jo, tho more compact than the egrets, they still have an elegance I slightly missed here, and with that long white head feather always seems like they are dressed for a ball, the colors are so soft and subtle in grey blues, there is still a lot for me to get down in the gap from what I see to what I can do.

Tim...sable? maybe that's part of the problem, I've been using quill type squirrel brushes that have a huge body and tiny tip, but they are very floppy no real spring, and no pressure can be applied to the tip, it has to be drawn from the side or used completely perpendicular to the paper to work.....I 'll see if I can find a different brush.
 
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I think you've picked the hardest group of birds to start out on Colleen ... Herons, egrets ... very hard indeed ... their constant metamorphosis into headless, neckless hunchbacks isn't easy on the sketching eye! You've done very well getting the basic form together on the NH ... the painting will come with practice.
 
Well, these are what's here to work from, at Shollenberger it's completely deserted, and haven't been able to go to the coast in a while. Good to know they are hard and it's not just me. Maybe if I can do these the others will be easier when I get to them. :)

As for the watercolor, I think I will just have to face my fears and paint a whole lot until I get it to be something natural to my hand like my other media.....it is a bit less of a fight than before, I'm also going to try some real watercolor paper and see how that is...thanks for the encouragement Deborah..
 
As for the watercolor, I think I will just have to face my fears and paint a whole lot until I get it to be something natural to my hand like my other media.....

Actually, I also neglected to mention, you also picked the hardest media to work with - w/c are notoriously difficult - I painted in oils many years ago - much easier - the secret I believe with w/c is that a little less is much better - unfortunately with my own attempts, I still don't appear to be party to that little secret! (Or perhaps it's like Chinese whispers and I heard them say a little 'mess' is much better :-O )
 
yes Deborah, I'm finding simple is better and messing around loses the freshness, but I do see artists like Harris-Ching do photo detail realism with it, have no idea how. For now Tim's work is my mentor, I'm trying to do it like he does...also wc is the only media I haven't mastered yet, so I'd like to add it to my tool bag. I'm now at home with pastel and oil I used to do acrylic, but prefer oil, so seldom use it.

I used to do a very esoteric painting theory called Illumimism, whereby adhering to certain principals of color application that are dervived from how color works in the atmosphere, you create a color field that at the end is subtly tranformed into some subject matter. I did this work for 7 years, it uses watercolor glazes only and a painting might have 300-400 layers of pure transparent color ( yes it can be done if you are crazy enough to work for at least a year every day to get the technical skill before you can manage your first real painting) So the only way I know to do wc is the glaze. Working with a full brush and making it fit a subject you've already drawn is new, so is mixing colors, as in Illuminism all colors are mixed optically by the transparent layers on the paper. I'll post one if you're interested.

Today at the tree I tried something different, I didn't draw I went direct to the wc and did direct painting only. This was fun and challenging, no way to correct, and going back over to add something only spoiled it, so you have one shot, it sure is good training.
various egrets, mostly great, and one page of the night heron...

The results are OK, ( my idea of high praise for my work:king:) and I think I'll try it again. Best part is, it's teaching me how much water to add to get different values.

I did a few pages then stopped to pick up a young snowy that fell out of the nest and was in the street, we have a local bird rescue group that helps them. I snuck a quick look at its wing structure before I took it in.
 

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Superb - bravo. This is certainly an approach which has reaped dividends. Really love these.
I don't know about being your mentor - I'm probably learning more from you and your approach than the other way around!
 
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