A Feathered Friend

 Inspiration for this post arrived last week at my bird feeder.  The flash of red I kept seeing outside my window finally landed and it was a male House Finch!  For those familiar with my previous studio set-up in Los Angeles, seeing birds outside my basement apartment was an extreme rarity, so it is with great joy that I'm seeing more feathered friends here in Virginia now that Spring has sprung!   

Since I often paint birds, I thought I would use this little fella for a tutorial.  Below you will find information and steps on how I painted the male House Finch so that you can get ideas for how to build layers and work blends.  For this painting I am using oils and painting alla prima, but the same ideas can be applied to acrylics, especially when using Golden's slow-dry OPEN paints!

The first step is to get your image onto a substrate.  I'm using a cradled panel to have a sturdy support for my oils.  You can do an image transfer here or draw the bird by hand.  For those who find drawing a challege, think about starting with big shapes and filling them in with smaller shapes.  Print out a few reference images of the bird and trace their lines with a sharpie.  Above you will see how I drew the larger, simplified shapes on my panel (with pencil) first.  This helps with figuring out the structure of the bird without getting too caught up in the detail - you can add that later!

The simple shapes that you draw will give you a nice map of where to fill in the rest of the basic detail for the bird.  The head will be trickier than the rest of the body, but if you can get the beak and eye in a place that looks "right", you'll be set!  Here you will see that I made up a couple details with the tail feathers and branch.  The wire birds perch on behind my house is quite thick so it covers a lot of the tail in a photo, so I drew in a thin branch for the finch to rest on.  If you choose this route also, reference other images of the same bird to get an idea for the shape of the tail and draw this in on your substrate.  The goal in drawing this bird is to keep it simple, you can finesse the feathery details later, right now you just want to create a basic guideline to know where to group your colors!  Be sure to also plug in some loose lines in the background so you know where to place color there too!

Pick your palette!  Here I used Titanium White, Van Dyke Brown, French Ochre Havane,  Fanchon Red (which is a Napthol Red), Crimson Lake, Sevres Blue, Ultramarine Green, and Permanent Yellow Light.  

I started the bird by painting in my darks first - mainly Van Dyke Brown, but also some French Ochre Havane as a warm brown in the face, and 50:50 Crimson Lake:Van Dyke Brown in the body.  Follow your pencil lines as a map for where to fill in, a paint-by-number almost!

From there, use the Titanium White mixed with varying quantities of Van Dyke Brown to make some light grays for the lighter colored feathers.  Move this mixture back and forth with your brush into the dark colors and see how the two move together.  Use sweeping motions and light pressure - this will distribute more color.  If you use firm pressure you can remove too much paint.  Also make sure you are using enough paint to make the colors blend - don't be shy about working a big brush-full of color, you need paint to paint after all :)

Soften the edges between your grays and darks by using soft pressure on the brush.  Move the brush at different angles to change the dynamic of the stroke.  Notice how some feathers move a different direction than others - account for this by changing the angle of the brush, or even changing to a different brush of a larger or smaller size.  When you are satisfied with the placement of your feathers at this point, enhance the dark areas by applying more paint...my first layer of browns was a little thin and looked "empty", so I made it look richer by layering more color.  It helps here to do a tapping motion with your brush onto the substrate so that the new layer of color rests onto the previous wet layer - if you drag new color into wet color, you can risk removing the paint.  When doing this, try holding the brush so that the hairs are almost parallel to the surface when you tap the color, this will help maintain lighter pressure on the surface!

From here you can start plugging in the rest of the red!  I worked from my darkest red to my lightest red.  Remember I started with a recipe of 50:50 Crimson Lake to Van Dyke Brown, so I applied a little more Crimson Lake to overlap that section slightly and move upwards from the bird's body to the head.  

After you place your darkest reds, work the middle value reds.  I switched to Fanchon Red for the bird's breast since it is quite opaque and gets good coverage.  Yes, it is brighter than what the bird looks like in person, but here I am trying to capture that initial feeling of seeing a red bird and to me it was brilliant!  

You see in my photos above that when I'm brushing the red, I'm using short, more horizontal strokes as I move upwards (again, with light pressure!).  As each one overlaps it will give the look of one feather being tucked under the other.  My top layer of color will be the upper most layer of the feathers as seen on the bird.  

Keep this application of red pretty loose, you do not have to render each feather individually.

The next step is to paint in a few details.  I started around the face and added darker brown to the eye, refined the grays in the beak and around the eye.  You can also add pure white into the red layers to give the feathers some highlights.

Here I also used a smaller brush to add a few detailed strokes in the dark-colored feathers to give them better visual direction as well as higher contrast if any of those areas got too gray or muddy.

Plug in some warm browns for the branch before painting the bird feet.  I used the French Ochre Havane by itself as a base color, then mixed it with a touch of Titanium White to lighten it and give the branch more dimension.

The last step in this section is to paint the bird's feet.  All I did was brush on Van Dyke Brown first, then drag in some white with short stroke of a small round brush to suggest the wrinkles in the toes!

I don't always start my painting with the foreground, I almost always do the background first, but since I'm working alla prima it was easiest for me to start in the middle of my substrate and work towards the edges!  

I followed the map I drew, which was a series of circles and squares to suggest a distant tree and the voids between its leaves, to create a basic background.  As mentioned in my blog from last week, I just love the look of light blues and teal greens next to reds, so I used that combination here.  I brushed Sevres Blue and Ultramarine Green (by itself and also mixed with a touch of Permanent Yellow Light to warm it up) in my negative space, then blended Titanium White into these colors to soften them and establish areas of highlight. 

 I worked this color scheme around my entire background, being extra careful to not disturb the colors in my bird when I brushed the blues/greens next to them.

Next I used the tip of a plastic palette knife to inscribe lines into my wet paint, following some of the shapes I made with my colors to place the bird in an environment of foliage!

To enhance these shapes and finish off the background (for this layer), I brushed Titanium White into the inscribed leaves.   

As with all of my paintings, I sat on this one for a few days to think about what else it needed.  I waited until the alla prima layer dried to the touch and assessed how to improve the bird in order to make me happy.  I decided to brighten up the bird with a touch more Fanchon Red, add an extension to the branch, soften my blends, tweak a few contours, and increase the contrast in the background.  To harmonize my colors, I brought some of the Sevres Blue used in the background into the bird (mixed with Crimson Lake to make a dark purple) and into the branch (mixed with French Ochre Havane to make an earthy olive green).  Now it's time to move onto the next project!

House Finch (Male), Oil on Panel, 10x8 inches