BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="colleenc" data-source="post: 1518904" data-attributes="member: 76425">Nick, thank you so much for saying this to me, it changes everything and I think it's true.That said, I'm not sure the sketch is as important as some invisible something that happens inside the creative self when the sketch is done, and the marks are just the bare tracks left over.  Still we all love beautiful sketches don't we!Yesterday at the tree, I began to wonder what the birds would look like in moonlight, I've done several moonlight paintings of animals I did long studies of, horses and cheetah. I've also spent many hours observing the moonlight, with the help of a nice white and black horse who used to live in the pasture next to my cottage. I have not by any means figured it out. I've also read a few passages from other artists about how they do it. One of them paints the animal in daylight colors and just puts a indigo glaze over it. I haven't done a wip here, so thought this might make a good one. I got this stunning view of one of the last adults in breeding plumage yesterday it was at the tip top of the tree against a blue sky...knocked me over....So I put the photo in photoshop and messed around, I do a lot of prelim work this way any more, lets me do a lot trials quickly to see, sort of virtual thumbnails.   Here is the watercolor study I did for the neck, and the pastel about 1/2 way done. Lower dark blue is the color of the paper I'm using... I think the neck studies really helped me work out that twisting tube, which I'm getting with warm and cool values. Have no idea how I'm going to get the veils of breeding plumes, I have a few. One of them was a gift yesterday as I was thinking about this work one nice fresh one came floating down....do you think it was a hint?|^|</blockquote>

Verification