(no subject)

[corvi]

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.

Comments

[draculard]

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.