Day 50

Mourning Dove

(4x5", Oil) Price: $ 70.00  SOLD

Yes, it's another bird. I tried something a little more complicated than usual with this painting. I used the head of a statue that a seagull was gracing in another photo, and then chose a photo of a mourning dove to supplant said seagull. I changed the background entirely, and noodled lots of happy smoodges in green to give the dove's warm colouring a chance at standing out against it. Unfortunately, there is a bit of light reflection from the camera in the photo I took of it, over the dove area, washing him out just a bit.

I used the left over paint from yesterdays palette to paint this little guy and his perch. However, with a tight time constraint and not enough paint on my brush, the dove isn't quite as finished as I'd have liked. That's an old habit of mine - not enough paint on the brush. I'm learning to gauge amounts of paint needed for each brush stroke, and when to let the undertint of the canvas show through. It changes with each painting. It's funny, when I was young and learning to use oil paint, I was very impatient - as youth is - to see a finished product. Of course, my canvases were overly large and things got messy as I tried to complete each painting in one sitting. As years progressed, I began to paint in very thin layers with lots of glazing and blending. There was still room for happy accidents on the canvas, but I'd formed the habit of not using nearly enough paint on the brush. In these recent months, I've been having fun correcting that and working my little paintings up in one sitting again - just like I used to when I was young. The size, content, and paint are a lot less messy and a lot more controllable. Strangely enough, I've been consistently painting my birds on 4x5" canvasses. So much so, that's a bit daunting to go back up to using 6x8" canvasses: they now seem so big.

Anyway, more tomorrow I guess. I can't believe I've reached fifty little paintings. Wow. That's a helluv an achievement for me. Thanks for hanging in there with me.
Now, back to painting...
Cheers,
Marianne