Showing posts with label watercolor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label watercolor. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Northern Parula

 
Most of the time I like to draw birds and other subjects without a background, I prefer the crisp edges and it is much faster.  I decided to try and put a very Spring-like background behind this Northern parula.  The bird is almost all done in colored pencil while the background is almost all watercolor.  Below are some in-progress photos.
 
 
 

Friday, October 12, 2012

An Unusual Epiphyte


 
September was a busy month - my wife, son and I moved from Cleveland, Ohio to a small town in Central, IL and attended family weddings in Chicago and New Orleans.  In a three week stretch I went from Cleveland to Cent IL to Chicago to Cleveland to Cent IL to St. Louis to New Orleans to Cent IL so I have had almost no time to sketch or post to my blog.
 
Anyway, while in the New Orleans Garden District I loved seeing the old live oaks (Quercus virginiana) almost all of them were hosting the epiphytes resurrection fern (Polypodium polypodioides) and Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides). Normally I would be bothered by a bunch of garbage or non organic junk hanging from such beautiful trees, but the Marti Gras beads hanging from oak limbs along the parade routes did not look out of place at all and were actually attractive. 
 
When I finally got some of my art stuff unpacked this was the first thing that I decided to sketch (colored pencil) and paint (watercolor).  If it looks funny in the middle it is because it is a poor splicing job by me - I need a larger scanner or a better computer program.