Speaking of Art Blog

Chilly Day, pastel, 10x8"

This is my latest pastel, of a male bluebird standing on a tree branch on a chilly day in March.  In the upper Midwest in March the days are gray and cold.  With most of the leaves having fallen to the ground, trees and branches look like stark, colorless skeletons with hard edges.  The remaining snow on the ground is usually dirty, but it still reflects the sky and gives a white glow to everything from underneath.  I feel like there’s a sense of anticipation in the air in the month of March.  Spring is just around the corner and my eyes and mind thirst for bright color.  So when a male bluebird with its brilliant orange and blue coloring landed on a bare branch in our back yard in March, I grabbed my camera right away and snapped some reference photos. 

I’ve done four other paintings of bluebirds in the past, but rendering this scene was different.  First, the bird’s feathers were fluffed out to give it more insulation against the chilly air.  I couldn’t render its feathers, especially its breast, the same way I’d done in the past.  Instead of one mass of feathers I needed to use a variety of soft, subtle colors in thin layered, drawn lines to depict the fluffy feathers.

Second, I wanted to imply white snow reflecting the sky from underneath the scene, so I didn’t bring my background color all the way to the bottom or the right edge of the picture plane.  I gradated the background, gradually changing it to the white of the paper as I neared those two edges of the painting. 

Third, the two bare branches jutting forward at the bottom helped to serve as a nice contrast with those soft fluffy feathers.  My goal was to show the contrast in textures with the bird’s feathers as I chose my skeleton-like neutral colors for the branches with their distinct edges.

Lastly, I played with the color of the background in Photoshop even before I began this painting.  My reference photo’s background was mostly gray, but I wanted to depict a sense of anticipation of spring.  So I changed the color to a neutral, very pale green back there.  And that’s when it finally looked right to me, a chilly day in March.  It may have been cold and gray outside, but spring was just around the corner, and thank goodness a bluebird in our woods helped me to visualize the promise of warm things to come in the month of March.