Friday, October 21, 2005

The blue bluebird

Here is a detail of the shoulder after the second coat. I wanted to show how thin the coats are- and that you can see the details of the burned feathers. Also note the blending of the colors to make smooth transition from breast to neck to wing and back areas.
Working this thinly allows me to fool around with colors and placement for quite a while. If I don't like the result I just paint over the previous layer. Eventually, the top coats will carry the day.










The next photo shows me painting one of the third coats on the wing. Actually, I painted pure cobalt first- but that wasn't the right color. So then I mixed cobalt with ultramarine to get the right color. It is real dark now, but I needed that to get sufficient darkness into the details and shadowed areas.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very impressive work. I enjoyed the series and would like to see more.

Allen

Anonymous said...

Hi Donna,

Just finished checking out your website and going to your bluebird blog to see both the finished bluebird and the mouse on a leaf....both are quite impressive. What amazing detail. It's great to have a way to see the progress step-by-step...ah modern technology!

Anonymous said...

I like your work, looks really nice. I hope to start carving for the first time this week so here's hopeing...
=Nick
Brisbane, Australia