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
