A little Honey Eater

the process of painting one of the locals.

Some of the trees that line our fence attract little black and white Honey Eaters. They are small birds with yellow patches on their wings, and thin beaks for reaching the nectar in the flowering trees.

To start this work I’m going to draw it up freehand with a red pencil on a coloured ground of yellow-green and fluro-orange that I chucked on the canvas after some paint was left on my pallet from another time. I could use red paint instead of pencil to draw with, that would be my second preference, but I’m really enjoying using mixed media at the moment so I’ll try some pencil marks first.

I start with the red pencil, then use a led pencil then some red, orange and white paint to scribble out my composition.

Now I want to choose my colour pallet. It seems counter intuitive but I’m going to paint in the white parts of the bird first with some pastel colours. I’m going to do this because I may want to keep the red as my darkest value for the time being…I can add more dark later.

I put some Prussian blue, white, two kinds of pastel blues and a coral pink on my pallet.

After working for a bit I wanted to add a little yellow into the mix, but decided to use the orange instead (which is yellow with red mixed together) to mix into my greys. Working back and forth between the whites and the red for my dark I build up the layers… …adding a bit of burgundy into the red because I decided I want it darker in parts. I added a little of the Prussian into the feet to and it’s now I’m thinking about the background… …what to do with it…?

Leaves first? Branches? Sky?

I add ghost gum to my pallet, (a kind of neutral taupe colour) and some more of that yellow green that’s in the background.

I’ve definitely entered the “ugly stage” of the painting. Writing that down inspired me to google “ugly stage of painting” to which I found the following -

“It is usually right after you have done your under-painting and blocked in your lights, darks and midtones. There is no colour and very little form but remember, you still have to add those things. Your painting is probably not ugly, it just isn't finished. You are at the ugly stage of a painting.”

note - in my method there’s plenty of colour but no colour harmony…fancy that!

To create some harmony I need to paint out the background. My idea is to do a sky colour, light and greyish. This next part is really fun and interesting, and will absolutely change the feel of the painting. I do want to choose my grey carefully - a bluish grey or a pinkish grey…decisions…decisions… …could go for a brightish blue even. To solve this dilemma I will test a few colours by painting little squares of colour on paper and holding them next to the painting.

While I’m thinking about it I prepare another finished painting for upload to my Bluethumb shop. Touching up the sides, wire on the back. Name and sign it and then photograph it and create a styled scene ready for the upload.

I’ll put a link to my bluethumb site - see here (note - I love how easy it is to link everything together in this site).

I’ve decided to use a similar blue to the one in the photo I just uploaded, so there’s some coherence when I post it onto my BT shop next to the other works.

After blocking in the blue it’s still ugly!

I’m going to give up on the red for the dark and go more towards black on the bird. I also want to add some flowers maybe? There’s some interesting perspective happening in the background with the muted shapes in the blue so I want to keep that.

Put some darks out - burgundy, dioxazine purple, Prussian and Pthalo blue, and Bluegum for my light.

I’m liking this better now. I like the touches of red underpainting showing through on the bird. I need to clean up my blue negative spaces, and touch up the leaves and maybe pink on that orange corner on the bottom right.

Here the balance feels pleasing to me, so now it’s just a matter of completing it with a bit of cleaning up and detail where needed.

To really finish this off, I need to sign, clean up the edges, wire on the back and upload it to my BT shop (which is where I intended it to go when I started it.) That’s a job for when I’m waiting for paint to dry on my next work.

Untill then, here’s the mock up using the canvy app on my phone: