fishing king

oil on 18 x 24 canvas panel. first painting finished for the year 2012!! hope this becomes a more painting productive year than the last one and hopefully i get to make lots of obra maestras (master pieces) too.

i started debating whether to paint this kingfisher on a 16x20 or a 18x24 inch canvas. the 18x24 won because i had more canvases in this size in stock than the 16x20. although the original idea was to paint a life sized azure kingfisher which is approximately 6 to 8 inches tall. a bird of this size and in my composition would still look small on a 16x20 canvas. as you can see i went with a larger than life scale ratio instead.

if you look closely, i made some mistakes around the early stages of penciling. usually making penciling mistakes on canvas are irreparable because no matter how much eraser you use the pencil marks will never be gone so its better you not try to use an eraser at all. thankfully, it was only a minor error and i didn't need to prepare a new canvas for a fresh start so i just flipped the canvas upside down and started again.

this is also the first time im painting in a vertical format for my oil painting collection.

choosing the right background color went through quite a lot of color changes. at first i used a mixture of french ultramarine and thalo green but it turned out to be too light in shade so i chose payne's gray as a top coat. i was aiming for dim aquarium lighting so i needed a dark bluish green background. at this stage i also covered up most of penciling mistakes from earlier too.

i chose the dim aquarium lighting mood to highlight the kingfisher's decent into the water to catch its prey. adjusting the real color of the azure kingfisher with warm yellow lighting was a fun experiment.

with all the right color mixtures in place it was easy to paint the rest of the body. using cerulean blue, cobalt blue, permanent green light with titanium white painting the bubbles was easy.

choosing color for the caught fish was a bit tricky since this is an underwater scene with dim yellow lighting the fish scales would be bouncing all sorts of color. i thought it would be fun to portray the fish to be somewhat translucent and glowing.

the last time i painted stone texture was on my curious kitty painting. instead of using sponges for texture again i decided to use colors instead. unlike the curious kitty painting the stones in this composition was close up and i think the sponges would not be able to bring out the textures i have envisioned. i think i did alright starting with the top most stone on the left going to the right.

the last stages in my painting usually involves a lot of glazing to adjust the light and dark of color hues. finally finished.

two hearts in one

oil on 16" x 20" canvas panel. i'm back to having green hues on my palette but this time it's on a smaller canvas. originally i was going to paint this on my usual 18" x 24" canvas panel but close up birds on that size of canvas would be too big so i had to settle for a smaller sized panel. i won't be posting the species of the birds. i noticed that friends have been referring to them as parrots and others say it's a pair of lovebirds. so i thought: wouldn't it be great to create a mystery for my audience by not confirming any of their answers. ( this is me trying to show art that makes people think :p )

in my lethal look painting experiment i covered the canvas in a toned color first. i was very satisfied with the result and decided to do it again using a mixture of titanium white, payne's gray and french ultramarine but only on the background.

next step is the color test on the bird's head on the right. i find that picking out the right colors to use is the most difficult stage in a painting. once i knew i had the right hues everything fell into place.

the bird on the left took half of the time to paint than the bird ont he right since they're almost mirror images of one another.

painting the branch was lots of fun i applied the same techniques i invented during my fox cub background painting.

the final step is the painting of the background. i opted to put down all my tiny #3/0 sized detail brushes and used bigger sized #2 flat brush for a hazy impressionistic background of foliage. using a bigger brush would prevent me from putting in so much detail.

finally finished ^_^v

mandarin duck

the first time i saw a mandarin duck was on a duck species book my reaction was "is that for real?". it really looked like a cartoon and since then it was my favorite species of duck. it comes in different colors too. when i saw the announcement of an art gallery looking for visual artists to participate in a 12x12 canvas art show. i decided that this was my opportunity to oil paint my favorite duck.



the adult male is a striking and unmistakable it has a red bill, large white crescent above the eye and reddish face and "whiskers". the breast is purple with two vertical white bars, and the flanks ruddy, with two orange "sails" at the back. meanwhile, the female is similar to female wood duck, with a white eye-ring and stripe running back from the eye, but is paler below, has a small white flank stripe, and a pale tip to its bill.