August 4, 2015

Bird of a Different Feather

For a change, this post is not about a classic car hood ornament of a bird that I am doing in oil paint.

No - this is an actual bird that I am doing up in pastels. I shot this bird (with a camera) back in the springtime while on a visit to the National Aviary in warm and sunny Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. Hopefully the finished piece won’t be as terrible as my progress shots below:




The bird is a brilliant blue, so I figured I would go for a complementary color scheme and try orange as a background.

My intent in this piece is to have that free claw be the center of interest, knowing all the while that there will be a tension between it and the bird's eye, since that is naturally where a viewers eye will go first. I will try to do the claw to a higher degree of finish than the rest of the piece in order to make this happen. “Try” is the key word here.

Can’t say for certain what specific type of parrot this is because I broke one of the rules of a decent photographer when shooting this subject by neglecting to shoot the identification sign while at the Aviary. Don’t actually remember seeing one in the room, but I am certain it must have been there somewhere.

On a final, and somewhat unrelated note, another original drawing I did a few years ago just sold:

"My Skull"

The new owner told me it hangs next to an Ansel Adams. Not bad company to be in I would say.