bluebirds

Yesterday I told Sally about my day in the studio and she said, "Oh, I love your birds."  So I'll post them here for her and you:  two bluebirds: one is a sketch, and one more detailed and more plumped up from the cold and wind.  It is still winter after all.  Yet we have glimpses of spring, including a few returning bluebirds.
At  Ai-jane.blogspot.com/search/label/bluebird  I have a previous pair of bluebirds: one sketchy and one plumped!

bluebird in field

Bluebird in field

One more time I watched a bluebird pause at our park, which of course can look like a field.  Who is to say for the bluebird?  So I made another, fuller image of the bluebird with green "field" all around.  This bluebird is alert, almost quivering.  He did not stay long.  Most years I do not see a bluebird after early spring.

This pastel painting has many layers, so that the printmaking paper will probably bow a bit whenever the humidity becomes high.  If I frame this, I will ask Bud to add a separator between the mat and the paper so that the paper can move more easily with the humidity changes, and so that if any particles of pastel drop, they can drop off between the mat and the paper rather than on the mat.  Bud uses 4-ply matboard strips as a separator.   Some framers use plastic strips that align with the outside edges of the mat and the rabbet of the frame.  Pastel painters use fixative--a kind of sprayed varnish---to fix the pastel particles in place, but some particles inevitably drop over time.  And here in this painting, there are many layers of pastel and a paper that might slightly move:  a call for special care.  This bluebird is still and ready to move:  we'll be prepared as best we can to watch!

between flitting

Baltimore Oriole perched, turning

This oriole did not stay around long.  He came into our yard, flitted sideways a few times, sang enormously for awhile, and then was away.  I have not seen him again, three days later now.

Alarming color he flies in with.  Do you have a similarly colored bird in your area?  (Nb. We do not live in Baltimore.)

Bluebird perched for a moment

The park across the street almost looks like a field.  So the bluebird paused there.

This sketch is close to the paper, that is, you can see all the strokes that I used, coming "up" from the first charcoal strokes to the colored watercolor and gouache strokes. (And I left the charcoal here rather than, say, bring in a background color to surround the bird.)   Gouache is basically watercolor with an opaque white, zinc white, added to it.  Often I mix white with my watercolors as I sketch, to give the color some "body" as well as opacity.  European art writers used to use the term "body color" in their descriptions of sketches and I think they were referring to gouache or maybe to lightly-dampened pigment or pastel.  Dry pigment or powdered charcoal and pastel can add wonderful grit and body to brushstrokes of paint.   Paint and pigment and pencil and white and whatever can all mix in in many ways.  Without regard to definition, they flit around, these mixtures!  Still, in the moments that they pause, they can start to form brushstrokes or words, or after awhile, a bird.