A smaller painting from our Iceland trip a few years ago. We saw many such vistas as this and some of the landscape was really un-worldly! Love to take an extended trip there and spend more time painting the incredible landscape - such beauty wherever you looked. This oil on canvas is 8 x 10 inches.
Quite some time ago, I painted a male peacock trying not to make a hash of the intricate plumage. This time, I started this smaller study of a female which, thankfully has a more simple plumage. For the painting, I concentrated mostly on the head trying to capture the details around the eye and just suggested the rest of its plumage. I have been putting off doing another painting of the male for some time but perhaps finishing this female will inspire me to finally make a start on that one. Size is around 7 x 8 inches (18 x 20 cm), watercolor on Grumbacher paper.
Walking the Eastern Shore beaches as I have done so many times in the past, one often comes across Sanderlings. Usually only a single bird at a time but occasionally (especially on migration) up to 15 or so. I love watching them 'chasing the waves' as someone so adeptly put it with their running after a receding wave, feeding frantically then running up the beach again ahead of the next incoming one. Many are so used to people walking by that they simply wait until you have passed then go back to feeding again. Occasionally they will fly a little ahead of you and this is what I wanted to capture in my painting. Their strongly patterned wings flicker and capture the eye, usually they are angled downwards and the short flight ends with a quick run on jet black legs.
When I first started working on this small painting, I had in my mind a rather simple composition with almost flat-like colors. After laying in basic areas of mostly blue and warm gray, everything looked too simplistic so I began overpainting lighter tones then added more definition to the mountainside. Every time I looked at the painting, I saw something else that needed work. What started out as being something that I wanted to finish in a short time extended to a painting spread over two weeks. Not that I was working on it all that time but it just goes to show, sometimes one has to follow the dictates of the painting and take it to its natural conclusion irrespective of ones initial idea. Size is 7 x 5 inches (18 x 13 cm), acrylic on board.
