DaveK! I love birds. I’ve been a bird enthusiast since about 1995 when I started feeding birds in my backyard and evolving into a passionate “birder!” Cedar waxwings are one of my favorite birds. I love their high-pitched whistle and that little bit of neon yellow on the end of their tail, as if it had been dipped in a can of paint! You’ve done an awesome job of rendering this beautiful bird. My favorite combination of media right now is pan pastels and colored pencils. I think I may have missed it, but what paper did you use in your final drawing? I have been using pastelmat paper for this combination.
When doing birds, I’m a big fan of keeping the background minimal, just as you’ve done. I think the bird should definitely be the star of the show. The only suggestion is have is pay close attention to directional lines and feather details. My experience is that the more patience I practice in these situations, the more successful the outcome. I do love this piece, though, just as it is.
@Brenda thanks for your feedback! I used Strathmore Colored Pencil pad 400 Series paper (9" x 12"). It’s medium surface, acid free, 100 lb paper. The surface is pretty smooth. Using the pan pastels was a challenge because I’m likely not using enough material and the applicators make it really challenging to avoid a halo effect on the main subject. Since the background was so dark, I was concerned about the dark material covering areas that needed to be light/bright, hence the halo around the branch and it’s buds. In a few areas where the dark material overlapped the buds I couldn’t recover the brightness of the yellow needed on the buds which was unfortunate. If there is a way to fix that I’d be grateful for the information!
The other challenge was that the hairs on the cedar waxwing body are extremely fine and hard to even differentiate on the reference photo so I think I overcorrected on attempting to make them more distinct. I believe the photographer used some filtering to brighten up the yellow contrast because looking at many other cedar waxwing photos showed less bright yellow areas in the upper torso area, so I changed the balance a bit to correct for that. I had to get up and walk away from the table often because things ‘just didn’t look right’. This is definitely an experience to moderate my tendency toward being a perfectionist.
I added some color to the lower right corner to hopefully balance the light and dark areas… And I tried to rid myself of the stubborn halo effect along the branch.
In the same place that you see the forum at the top of the Virtual Instructor website you will also see where it says critique. You will see all of the critiques there and they come out weekly on Thursday or Friday since 2012.
Same with the live lessons, if you go under lessons and look for the live lessons and click there then you can see all of the past lessons. They come out every Wednesday at 8pm after getting sketchy on YouTube. It is a lot of fun due to the chat box.
Hope to see you there sometime, that is if you are a member of the virtual instructor, which in my opinion is worth every penny…
and yes, I believe glass is always better, and there are some mediums like oils, acrylics, etc. that do not even need glass. If anyone else out there knows better or can clarify let us know.
Thanks @TLP after your previous message I looked around and found the critique section. There’s some great artist work in there and the critiques are really sound and helpful. I need to go through the course on composition next. I saw the critique of your winter watercolor painting. That was really amazing work, I love it. I’ve always enjoyed watercolor but it is pretty unforgiving at the same time. I’m planning a couple more bird projects then maybe move into a different medium.
I do believe the critique you found was for Terri Robinson. There are two of us and it can get confusing. I do have some critiques on there. They are numbers 391, 352, 344.
As always looking forward to seeing more of your artwork.
It looks awesome @DaveK. I particularly like the use of primary colors! The yellow buds on the twig certainly tie things together very nicely! It is very well done, in my opinion. I’d say the main thing going forward would be to do some work with some of Matt’s tutorials for form and shape. The bird definitely has that already, but it could be stronger. I love his little feet!!!
Here’s a drawing I did from the three little birds drawing course. It’s the values of dark and light as well as directional strokes that give it the look of shape and form as well as giving the impression of some individual feathers
I highly recommend all of Matt’s drawing courses, but especially the 25 Days to Better Drawing. That’s where I started last July and never looked back. When you get to the colored pencil course, the one thing that really blew me away was the realistic, natural black Matt makes with dark umber and indigo blue.
Keep up the great work! I’m excited to see more of it!
@Brenda thanks for thoughts. I’ve gone through quite a few of the courses which are really helpful. I’m thinking I needed to add more individual detail, the problem maybe had to do with the nature of the feathers/hairs on the cedar waxwing bird. Here is the reference photo:
The texture of the birds coat is very fine, unlike some of Matts example drawings, so I wasn’t sure how to increase the texture on the body beyond shadow and color differentiation. I added some, but definitely not as much as you did in your drawing, which is awesome, from the 3 little bird course (which was really helpful for this work.)
The cedar waxwings are one of my favorite birds, and they are indeed very satin-like with little feather definition, and it would feel a little weird to make them look any other way. I think just playing with the values (shadows and highlights) more is your answer, but I don’t know that you need to do anything else to this drawing. I really do like it as it is. I heard a flock of waxwings in the trees around my house today. They are one of the later species to migrate north from here every year. I always wonder if they’ve forgotten to go.
I had someone approach my daughter today about asking me if she could purchase some of my bird drawings/paintings for her mother who apparently loves Carolina wrens. I have lots of wren photos, so I might just work up a colored pencil drawing to send her for her thoughts. I’m still amazed when people want my art. LOL!
It always feels nice when people appreciate your art. I’m doing a drawing of a pair of Little Bee Eater birds that the same photographer took in Kenya (Amboseli National Park.) His photography is so well done that composition is already there, but I still need to learn more…
Composition is so important, and great photographers are usually great at composing through the camera lens. I’ve only seen bee eaters on a trip to Australia. I’ve only done one drawing of a Superb Fairy Wren I saw on that trip. It’s time for me to dig deep into my photos, I think!
@Brenda, what paper did you use on this blue jay picture and did you use pan pastel or stick pastels? My background pastels seem like they didn’t come out as smooth on the paper I used (Strathmore Colored Pencil pad 400 Series paper (9" x 12".)
I love pastelmat paper. The one problem with using colored pencils on pastelmat is that the paper tends to really eat up the pencil material. It’s not quite as bad with polychromos pencils as opposed to, say, Prismacolor Premier.
I do love this piece, though, just as it is.
I’m planning a couple more bird projects then maybe move into a different medium.
. I’ll look at your critiques.
