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Sean Murtha
AFC, SAA
Birds, Landscape, Dioramas |
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SKETCHES AND STUDIES
I draw and paint from nature as often as I can. Birds are not usually willing subjects, and often the best you can get is a rough gesture. But the process of drawing familiarizes one with the movement and character of a bird, and this can be of far more value to an artist than the frozen moment of a photograph. Below I've collected some sketchbook pages and studies illustrating the variety of ways I go about gathering the references I need for a finished painting.
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Gadwall Studies, 1-23-09
This is a typical page from my sketchbook, with a variety of gestural studies, some unfinished, some more resolved as the bird held a pose for a bit longer, or returned to it often. This is a learning process for me, getting me "inside" the bird. Even if none of these sketches is ever used directly in a painting, the accumulated experience will.
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Great Horned Owl sketch, 12-24-09
Some birds, such as this Great Horned Owl, will hold a pose longer than a studio model and afford the opportunity for something approaching a portrait. Had it not been so cold and I eager to get home to my family on Christmas Eve, I might have developed this into a finished piece right on the spot.
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Robin death pose, oil sketch
During a painting outing I happened upon this robin, an unfortunate winter casualty. I have often done studies from museum study skins, but this was a rare chance to capture its colors and form in strong natural sunlight, so I propped it up on one of my painting panels and did this quick study in oil. Even in death it has dignity and grace.
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FROM THE BUSH TO THE BRUSH: a painting in progress
What follows are a series of images documenting the variety of references I've used in putting together an oil painting of a Blue-headed Vireo.
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Field Sketch
These sketches were all that I got of a late-season Blue-headed Vireo. Though pretty rough, I liked the perkiness of the pose, with its head slightly inclined, suggesting a bird just about to fly off.
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Blue headed Vireo watercolor sketch
The field sketch lacked detail, proportion, and color, but fortunately I was able to locate a nice taxidermic specimen, which was even close to my chosen pose. An artist must be careful using taxidermy as reference, however, since much depends on the skill of the taxidermist and the age and condition of the specimen. This one was in fairly good shape, and by adding this with the field sketch I hope to preserve the "perkiness" that originally attracted me.
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Compositional ideas
A few days later I saw a Yellow-rumped Warbler perched near the base of a horizontal branch with a cluster of autumnal leaves further out, and it sparked a composition in my mind. I had hoped to use the vireo sketch and this composition suited it very well; with the bird at one end of a long rectangle and a wide open space for it to fly off into. These sketches were done on the back of some office stationary, my sketchbook not being at hand.
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Leaf studies
Another important aspect to this painting was the season. Mid-October is somewhat late for a Blue-headed vireo, and I hesitated a bit depicting it amidst peak color. A little research revealed that they have been known to occur in my area even as late as November, which gave me license to go ahead. I photographed various clusters of leaves, but did these watercolor studies as a guide to color and, more importantly, to familiarize myself with their character.
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Preliminary color sketch
Recently I've gotten into the habit of doing a preliminary color sketch to try out different ideas before diving into the final canvas. I want this painting to be loose and spontaneous, and to avoid too much over-painting, so I used this sketch to work through some of the potential problems, as well as harmonizing the colors. Since I was concentrating on the bird alone on a square panel, I recomposed the background to make it in effect an entirely different painting.
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Finished Painting
The finished piece. The pose is closer to that of the original sketch, and combined with the whip-like tension of the branch and modulated "negative" space, achieves that suspenseful moment before flight that was my original intent.
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