corvi | (no subject)

Some days you wake up and you need to paint a vulture and plum blossom monster even though it's not a traditional Chinese brush painting subject.

This is my second attempt to paint birds. The instructor hasn't shown us birds yet, but I love birds, so here we are.

This time I planned out major feathers and did one brush stroke, approximately, outlining each. I think I succeeded at portraying a bunch of feathers! Overall, I'm not sure the collection of feathers quite coalesces into a bird, but it feels like I figured some things out and I'm pleased. I am considering going back over all the feathers with a grey or brown wash to make it all a little more solid-seeming.

Here's my previous attempt at birds.

Lumpy craggy mountains look good, and lumpy wind-twisted trees look good, but lumpy birds rather less so. I don't know if I need to get better at painting precisely, or if I need to use a completely different approach for birds than I do for landscapes. There's a classic style of "Bird and Flower" paintings that are more like cartoons: you outline shapes in very fine detailed black ink and fill them in with bright colours, but that is less interesting to me.

A bird with distinctive markings might be easier than an all-black bird, too. Hm.

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They all look like excellent lumpy birds to me.

I was just going to say what

twoeleven said -- they all look great to me! The vulture's feet are a little stiff, maybe? But I think the feathers came out really well. And the other two birds are just awesome.

All three of them are fantastic IMO, but I like the idea of a brown or gray wash on the vulture just to see how it turns out <.< Did you do a second wash on the black birds? It looks like there's a reflective blue sheen on their feathers but I can't tell if that's the paint you used or a really neat effect from the lighting.

The blue and black birds look like they have textured feathers; very cool!

I like both of these. I feel like the vulture and the plum blossoms are some kind of peacock alternative.

I am just imagining the plum blossom tail streaming behind the vulture as it flew... beauty in corpse-eating is a mood?

What if you picked lumpier birds, like fat little finches ready for the winter or something?

I think the magpies are a good start: that stark black-and-white patterning works very well for this kind of inkbrush and the tailfeathers in particular are very successful. I think your impulse to do a brown wash over the vulture to close its silhouette is a good thought, too, although it may be effective to choose ahead of time a couple of spots to leave white, as shine spots or highlights.

Also, I parsed that image at first as "vulture with cherry blossom tail", which is very gorgeous and evocative as an idea. Red head, pink blossoms, newness from death and all that.