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Ed's thread (4 Viewers)

Hello all. Had a day at home yesterday so I grabbed an offcut of canvas board and set myself task of creating a memento of an Asiatic Dowitcher from last month on late afternoon mud. But the lower section looked rather too dark. So I've sawn it off and rather than bin it have flipped it to become a shady autumnal drinking pool with Hawfinch. Now I'm just left with the top offcut, which is only 4 inches by 12 but I think will take a Bearded Tit or a Hobby...
 

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Y'know - just sometimes you can be a tad quick on the draw with that B&D, Ed. - The godwit is beautifully painted and I like(d) the mudscape. Having said that, without the serrated blade's application, we would perhaps never have had the wonderful little hawfinch - so it just goes to show what I know.
Are you calling the garganey 'finished' now, or what?
EDIT - Sorry - I'd better read a bit more carefully - and brush-up my ID skills!!!! Dowitcher, of course. I won't delete my original observation, cos it's funnier that way!
 
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Hello all. Had a day at home yesterday so I grabbed an offcut of canvas board and set myself task of creating a memento of an Asiatic Dowitcher from last month on late afternoon mud. But the lower section looked rather too dark. So I've sawn it off and rather than bin it have flipped it to become a shady autumnal drinking pool with Hawfinch. Now I'm just left with the top offcut, which is only 4 inches by 12 but I think will take a Bearded Tit or a Hobby...

BIG fan of the dowitcher Ed. Lovely work!

Dave
 
Hello all. I've been sneaking out to enjoy Spotted Redshanks, whch has been lovely but I'm not too excited with what I have to show so far. The coloured one is really a little experiment to see whether after recent learning I can 1. paint a controlled and sensible picture and 2. can do so without resorting to black paint.

Hopefully something more interesting on the Spotred theme to come..
 

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Hello all. I've been sneaking out to enjoy Spotted Redshanks, whch has been lovely but I'm not too excited with what I have to show so far. The coloured one is really a little experiment to see whether after recent learning I can 1. paint a controlled and sensible picture and 2. can do so without resorting to black paint.

Hopefully something more interesting on the Spotred theme to come..


Lovely work Ed, perhaps you can't see it but the colour piece is a little diamond. The best tringa in the soloar system!(I may be bias when it comes to late summer Spotted Reds!)

They are moving south here now too, no doubt will be looking at them myself over the next few weeks, which will be most welcome. I still remember my first like it was yesterday, found it close to my parents house in Dublin, it was a first year bird and I was fourteen, 1985!
 
I agree wholeheartedly with Alan, the spotshank is a beauty. You so can paint a controlled and sensible picture and who needs black when we've got purples?

I remember my first spotshank too, it was, (predictably), at Elmley, in a little pool just like the one you've painted. Happy days!

Mike
 
Stunning use of colour on this one. EEK! I can't remember my first Spotshank. All I know it was before '98. Never had the joy of seeing a late summer bird, though juvs and winter birds are little stunners aswell.
 
Redshank is superb, Ed. The purples and greens sitting in for your black paint makes me think of gasoline in a puddle (not the most eloquent analogy to conjure up, sorry!) -- he looks almost metallic in that low evening light.

Ah, my first spotshank, I remember him well ... he was riding a leprechaun in the unicorn meadow. We had tea together.
 
Hello all. After a few deluded efforts at proper painting, I've been nudged back into photoshop digipainting to do a Great Knot for Birds Korea.

This one is being done to a tight deadline so nothing like the same level of detail as the previous efforts. Even so it is devilishly difficult with this (or any other spring adult wader) to get the right degree of regular-but-random patterning and layout in the scaps.

Out of curiosity I have kept the stopwatch running on this one to see what level of efficiency can be achieved using these fiendish methods - total time from first draft (also attached) to last draft was 9 hours.
 

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This type of work shall always remain a mystery to me - yet I'm delighted to be able to view it and enjoy it with wide-mouthed ignorance. Lovely - and good to see the self-discipline time-wise.
 
Hello all- three weeks away and shamefully little by way of sketches to show for it. But to keep the thread ticking over, here's a capture-the-moment sketch of a Pel's Fishing Owl up the Zambezi.

I find I can't remember recent names dates of anything much these days, but I only have to close my eyes to see in detail the pic of a Pel's in Burton's Owls of the World from circa 1970...so this was a happy and long-awaited happening.
 

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. . . and contains all the flavour af halcyonic days of yesteryear. The experience clearly lived up to the long-awaited expectations and beautifully depicted.
Welcome back - three weeks up the Zambezi . . . must have been hell!!!!
 
this one sends a shiver down the spine - superb capture - there's something it evokes in me by way of response but the words aren't there.
 
Hello all- here's a miscellany reflecting a weekend of objects

-object 1 is my father's latest creation, which we floated on the pond today

-object 2 is is a barn owl nest box I made for the garden a couple of years ago by knocking down a stable with a sledgehammer and then nailing together some of the pieces- and lo and behold this week, I find we have barn owls in it. the bird I have drawn is I think the largest of the fledged young, trying to perch on the edge of the observation window.

- object 3 is weather vane which I saw this weekend for the first time since repainting it for its owners waaay back in the 1970s when the paint had pretty much flaked off. Not of interest of course by virtue of my rather fiddly repainting, but because the original was made and painted in the 1960s by a real bird artist..any guesses whose work I wirebrushed and sacreligiously overpainted?
 

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