Monday, April 25, 2011

Challenge 19 - Red-winged Blackbird (Agelaius phoenicius)



About the composition

It is time to move for a while to alive moving subjects ... birds, animals and eventually maybe "humans" as well.

I do not know much about this bird besides the fact that it is a male easily identified by jet black body plumage with prominent and solid red/orange and yellow epaulettes. It has a noticeably aggressive behavior and scares all sparrows around.

The artistic challenge here is to portray the impression of the black bird by introducing additional colors not only shades of gray. Play with color but make it read as black.

A tip.... this is a high resolution photograph...so if you click on it a couple of times you should see a very magnified image with clear eyes, light falling on the feathers etc. You can also right click and save it to your computer and then zoom it to see details.

Please send a photo of your painting the latest by May 14th. The next painting reference will be posted on Sunday, May 15th.

4 comments:

daybe said...

Cool, by the way this is a Red wing Black Bird.

Cheri said...

I am excited we are going to living things.

Thanks

Mark said...

Red-winged Blackbird
With wives’ all speckled brown,
Nesting near the water,
Never near the town.

Red-winged Blackbird
Living in the field,
Why not the forest,
Which offers better shield?

Red-winged Blackbird
Flying through the sky,
Your colors are so vivid,
They seem to come from dye.
------------------------------
Poem by Joseph Stanley Kozlowski (1912–1992), American portrait and watercolor artist.

Paint and Draw Together said...

Thanks Dave!

Look forward to your painting Cheri. I am glad you like the composition!

Thanks Mark for the nice poem.