Birdie

Just a quick update - it's Mother's Day today so I painted mum a card, as I've been doing since the watercolour painting class I took! Instead of botanicals, I thought I'd try something different and went for a robin.

I've not painted a bird in watercolours before - in fact, the only time I can remember painting a bird was in acrylics and it wasn't realistic - so this is pretty different. I had no idea what techniques I should be using so I just treated it like a drawing, but less scribbly than my actual drawings!

The biggest challenge were the pale colours. The robin in the reference photo I used had white feathers and was standing in snow. I don't even own white watercolour paint because it is bad and wrong - I was taught to use the white of the paper to represent the purest white shades. I mixed up a light grey and used that to suggest the shape a bit better on the robin itself, and diluted it to use for the snow as a wash. The textured paper works well with this technique.

I think this turned out quite nicely, but I'd definitely like to practice drawing birds more before I try painting them again. That way I can experiment more with different ways of shading to get a better idea of what works for feathers.