Never thought I'd be painting... bluebirds???

"Bluebird Couple"
Oil on Masonite
16x12"

I love the song, "Bluebird," by Australian songbird Kasey Chambers. Come to think of it, I dig that other song of the same name by Buffalo Springfield. However, it wasn't a song that inspired me to paint this rather decorative piece. I looked out on our back deck recently and spied a fat little bluebird perched atop the railing, looking 'round as though he owned the place. He's the first bluebird I've seen since we moved into this house a year ago.

Still, I didn't have the idea just then to try painting one -- or two, as it turned out -- of these fascinating lil' critters. A day or so later, I was browsing throughThe Ultimate Guide to Painting from Photographs (James Markle and Layne Vanover, editors; North Light, Cincinnati). The book discusses ways to combine muiltiple photo reference images into new, original compositions, and I wanted to do something like that. There's a whole section on painting birds in this manner. One demonstration in particular inspired me to try the decorative approach you see here.

I worked from two separate images of the birds found on the World Wide Web. In both instances, I flipped the original images using Photoshop. From the Web, I also learned that bluebirds enjoy honeysuckle berries, so I found a number of images of these, finally settling on one that was useful in creating my own set of branches, leaves and berries.

It was a bit of a trick getting the final composition drawn the way I wanted it onto tracing paper, then transferring it, using graphite paper, onto the masonite board, which I'd previously covered with three coats of white gesso. Atop the gesso coats I'd applied a coat of Folk Art linen-colored acrylic paint (by Plaid), atop which, while still wet, I used a sponge roller to work in a few globs of Folk Art white acrylic, to get the mottled effect.

Seems the easiest part was actually painting the birds, berries, branches -- and leaves!

This was a fun project, and I'm quite pleased with the results, if still a little surprised that I've actually tried something like this: my first foray into wildlife art! I will certainly have to give it another go before long.


Copyright ©2008 by Rick Koobs

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