Work In Progress: Osprey: Lover’s Key, Florida Update 15

            The birds and background are now nearly finished. I always leave room for additional touchups and changes. All objects in the painting relate to each other in tone, color and detail. Bringing one area of the painting to a certain stage of completion may change the relationship of another area. What I try to do is bring each object to what I think is about 90% - 95% completion, then look at all the objects in relation to one another to see if any objects need additional work. Some objects may need to be darkened or dulled, or need more color, or need more detail. I just look around and see what hits me. I walk away a lot of time and do something else. Then I’ll walk up on the painting and just look at it as a whole to see if any areas jump out as needing some additional work. Then I’ll sit down and attend to that area while the vision is still clear. When it fades I’ll walk away again and come back a few hours later and do the same thing. Little by little I hope to bring all areas into a unified, mutually supportive whole.

            In this update I’ve brought the foliage up to the same stage of completion. The foliage on the left side is in mist, so there is little definition and detail. I used a combination of Faber Castells (FC), olive green yellowish predominantly, as well as white, and cream, with some cadmium yellow and Prismacolor chartreuse for the highlights.

All the foliage on the right, under the nest was re-drawn. Rather than just draw in a jumble of foliage without any pattern, I lightly indicated branches, then added foliage to them. Here I used FC colors white, dark sepia, burnt umber, raw umber, olive green yellowish, and Prismacolor chartreuse and yellow ochre. I wanted the very bottom to fade into dark, while leaving the more detailed and more highlighted leaves up closer to the nest.

After completing the foliage I’ll be checking back often, getting an immediate impression of the whole, to see if the foliage needs more work – or if I need to alter the colors or definition or value. I don’t want the foliage to compete with the birds. So, I may dull the foliage more.

I also did some work on the fish. Here, dark sepia FC, olive green yellowish FC and some white FC to blend in the green, as it transitions to the underside, were added.

The painting is nearing completion now. I think the background needs a bit more work. I may add more definition to the clouds – and a little more drama.