a flock of birds rises over winter fields, first snow: watercolour and mixed media painting in a moleskine folio watercolour sketchbook
a flock of birds rise: watercolour and mixed media, detail
This is another look at the wonderful late afternoon light over the first snowfall of the year. Getting the intense glow of the sun wasn't easy - until I treated myself to a tube of opera rose from Winsor and Newton. It is intense! mixed with transparent yellow it glows. Thank you to my friend Robyn Sinclair for introducing me to this colour - another friend Liz Steele also bought it on her recommendation and has fallen in love with it too!
The whole painting:
It isn't easy to see the glazes and subtle colour changes in this so, further details below:
This was done in the big A3 moleskine watercolour folio sketchbook. A lovely size to use. Unlike the S&B sketchbook though, I had problems with the page buckling, meaning a lot of moving the book to prevent gulleys of deeper colour settling - not good (it did dry flat). The same wet wash in the S&B caused no buckling at all.
This one is mostly watercolour but there is some Derwent tinted charcoal pencil and pastel pencil in there as well.
The clouds are a little more subtle, a little less purple, than it appears in the whole image here - but to get the glow of the sky and reflections on the snow I had to settle for this reproduction. The cropped details show it better.
The flock of birds was far bigger - but for the sake of the painting I've limited the number. There must have been 100. Rooks??? they were silhouetted and it was impossible to tell for sure, but too big for starlings.
And an updated photo of the hedge
which shows it a little better
details:
write up is here
Word recognition: Sadly I was getting so much spam that I've had to reset the word check thing on comments - sorry as I find it annoying as well but it was getting ridiculous how much garbage I was getting :>( Please do leave me comments, I like hearing feedback.
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