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Painting An Eastern Bluebird In Acrylic (2)

Expanding Your Artistic Horizons Series

Painting Session 2
Date: 08/18/2017
Subject: Eastern Blue Bird on Bittersweet Branch
Medium: Acrylic
Colors Used In This Session:  Titanium White, Cobalt Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Cad Red Light, Golden Ochre, Burnt Sienna
Surface: Crescent Hot Press 200 Illustration Board, Cream Surface
Link to previous sessions Session 1

Hard to believe it has been almost four weeks since I worked on the first session of the Eastern Bluebird. I have had other obligations and continue to spend most of my time on a few oil paintings. I like to work on the Expanding Your Artistic Horizons Series because it is a nice break from Oil painting and is a chance to try something new. I spent most of this session trying to achieve a more realistic looking bird. But after comparing the end of session 1 photo to the session 2 photos, I am not sure I made a lot of progress. Trying to achieve some sense of volume in the bird's body is a challenge with Acrylic. What seems like an almost instantaneous drying time continues to give me issues. Unless there is a medium I have not tried that will slow the process down, I am going to have to try other techniques to achieve the results I want. I have not tried using the Acrylic Retarder on this painting because I could not see much of a difference in the last painting. I still wonder if it was more the paper absorbing the paint so may try again in the next session. During this session, I used small brush strokes and varied the values of the paint to try to get a more rounded body in the bird. I also started to detail the features and worked more on the husks and berries. I have a lot more work to do on the bird and berries before I am satisfied. I do like the smoothness of the illustration board as a surface to paint on and how the paint flows across the board. I like it much better then the paper I used when painting the Pileated Woodpecker.


End of Painting Session 1
End of Painting Session 1
End of Painting Session 2
End of Painting Session 2


Close-up of Bluebird
Close-up of Bluebird


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