Final Project for the course Artistic Watercolor Techniques for Illustrating Birds by Sarah Stokes

The course “Artistic Watercolor Techniques for Illustrating Birds” by Sarah Stokes was my first course on Domestika and my introduction to working with watercolors almost four years ago. Somehow I never dared to upload a final project as I always saw so much in my work that I could do better. Over the past few years, I've learned to embrace the process instead of looking for the “perfect” result - especially since I may never achieve it in my eyes anyway. Still, I never finished this course with a final project. Last week, after a period of portrait painting, I decided to turn my attention back to birds and finally complete this course.

Thank you Sarah for putting together this wonderful course - it was the perfect introduction to watercolor techniques and I will definitely continue to paint portraits of birds - they inspire me to play and experiment.

I mainly used Daniel Smith and Winsor Newton colors and Winsor Newton Professional 100% cotton paper hot pressed, 300 g/m2 (except for the picture with the birds on branches, where I used Fabriano 100% cotton rough paper, because I ran out of the Winsor Newton one).

I just love the colors and shapes of Blue-footed Boobies. I'm quite pleased with how the bird emerges from the background (which was painted directly with the first wash) and that I managed to leave some edges open this time.

I was fascinated by the colors of this crimsonfinch, which inspired me to attempt a painting in which the bird appears to emerge from a blob of color. Again, in the first wash I worked with a lot of water on a sloping surface and dripped Permanent Alizarin Crimson onto the wash. After that, I needed a lot of patience to keep the light areas light with a damp brush while it dried. The challenge afterwards was to keep the balance between detailed areas and abstraction.

This picture also inspired me to continue exploring color gradients by letting the pigments run into each other. I'm quite happy with the bird, but I definitely need to work on my technique for looser leaves.

The colors and shapes of pelicans - wow! I just had to try to paint them. But the different shades, values and gradients were a big challenge and it took me many attempts. After the colorful pelican, I wanted to work with a more subtle color palette - my goal here was to create the shape of the pelican with the play of shadows, closed and open edges. I'm quite happy with it, even if it still has potential. Next time, however, I would add a bit more texture to the wing (it takes a lot of experience to realize early enough whether there are enough splashes).

Something I've learned over the last few years is not to start painting until I'm 100% happy with the sketch. Since I've been focusing on watercolor techniques for these projects and I was aware I will probably need to take several attempts for each picture., this time I "allowed" myself to trace the birds from the reference images or from my first sketch in most cases.

For me, learning means trying things several times, failing and trying again. Even if I'm not always sure whether this is progression or obsession :) But I like the process and I still have lots of ideas about what I want to explore further and learn.