Autumn Sparrow
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8" x 10"
Painted on a gessobord.
There where many challenges in this painting. The background need to recede so that meant overlapping multi-colored leaves that are needed to contrast the sparrow and create the illusion of space. The leaves had to be larger as they got closer to the little bird and smaller and softer as they receded. Choosing the colors for the leaves depended mainly on the sparrow's light and dark body edges. If you look at the beak, tail, back wing and head the leaves are lighter. Even the sky color darken and lighten depending on the sparrow's edge. I kept the lightest sky color for the beak to draw the viewer's eye to the focal point in the painting. That took a lot of creative thought and luck.
The other challenge was the bird. So many layered colors were needed and I found that out by trail and error. I would look at an area on the bird ask myself what was the dominant color. After I mapped all the dominant colors I started to add the little varied colors and feather lines on top. This again require patience and trail/error techniques. I was lucking to have a wonderful photo to work from which helped and I posted it below. Thanks for the super photo, Rodney Campbell!
