Speaking of Art Blog

Bottoms Up, pastel, 14x11"

This pastel is my latest in a recent series of bird close-ups.  It’s of a Baltimore oriole at our jelly feeder in our back yard.  When I saw this oriole I was immediately struck by not only its shocking bold colors, but also its stance on the center pole of the feeder.  Sometimes birds do some downright acrobatic things as they reach for their food.  It’s fascinating to watch.

There are two things I want to point out here that really stood out for me and that I wanted to be sure to emphasize in my painting.  First is the design of the entire composition.  The bird’s slanting body created a beautiful sharp angle in relation to the horizontal lines of the red bird feeder.  I am purposely using a mirror image of the finished work here to show you what I looked at when I analyzed the finished piece.  Sometimes it helps to look at an image of my artwork upside down or as a mirror image.  Why?  Because I’ve grown accustomed to overlooking the overall design while I’ve been staring at the piece for so long one way.  When I look at the mirror image I’m forcing myself to look at the piece as a whole.  Flaws (and also strengths) jump out at me when I view the mirror image with fresh eyes.  Yep, I still see the dramatic diagonal angle of the bird’s body in relation to the feeder.  This creates a sense of movement in the piece as a whole.

Second, I noticed that since both the neon orange of the bird and the bright red of the feeder are such bold colors, each of them is showing reflected color from the other object.  The bird has some red in its lower orange feathers, and the red feeder has a darker orange toned area right underneath the neck area of the bird.  So I had to make sure to accentuate that.  Otherwise the two main objects in this piece would look disjointed, like they were each unaffected by the close proximity of the other object.  These are small details, but very important to the telling of my story.

I hope these tips help.  It’s the little things like this that can make or break a piece of artwork, and I like to pass along as many of them as I can to other artists.  We artists are all trying to tell our stories and create magic in the process and I like to pay it forward and share what works for me.  Happy painting.