Digital beginnings

Equipment

Cold-pressed 300gsm watercolour paper

Round sables Nos. 3 to 8

2b pencil

Soft putty-eraser

Watercolours

This demonstration is taken from the August 2020 issue of Leisure Painter.

Our Studio members have access to digital issues of both Leisure Painter and The Artist going back to 2015

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Colours

Lemon yellow

Cadmium red light

Alizarin crimson

Cerulean blue

Ultramarine

Lamp Black

How to paint a bullfinch, from processing a digital photograph to finished watercolour portrait

Bullfinch, watercolour on Schut Serene Coldpressed 300gsm watercolour paper (24x20cm)

Learn how to paint an image of a garden bird, from processing a digital photograph on your computer to the finished watercolour painting, with Chris Pendleton.

The use of photographs for reference

Many artists are wary of using photographs as reference material, but since the invention of the camera itself a lot of artists have recognised just how useful they can be.

Walter Sickert is known to have copied photographs for some of his work and even the celebrated Sir Henry Moore was discovered to have used newspaper photographs of Londoners sheltering from the Blitz in the underground for a painting, so there is no shame in taking a camera along as a witness when out sketching.

The benefits of photographing birds and animals

My photographs of birds and animals almost never capture the precise gesture or pose I’m looking for. Usually the moment has gone and I’m left with a fleeting memory to record in the few lines of a sketch.

My photographs, if I take any, are usually back up and will supply details back at the studio, especially of subjects I’m not too familiar with.

It’s important only to use your own photographs or to ask the permission of the photographer, but there are also many free online sources of images. Pixabay, for instance, has thousands of copyright-free images.

Transferring your image

The traditional illustrators’ method of transferring a printed photo was to draw a grid over the photo then draw a faint grid over your drawing paper and copy the outline across, making sure everything went into the right part of the right square. You can, of course, easily scale up the image to whatever size you want.

For commissions that require hyper-accuracy I also sometimes use an epidiascope, a kind of overhead projector that projects the image onto my paper.

Making the most of a computer

Now, of course, we have digital images so why not use that old redundant laptop or pc in your studio? Image handling is memory-greedy, especially for older computers, and will slow them down so get rid of all unnecessary programmes and disconnect it from the internet. A PC is probably best in a busy art studio as I’ve found a spilt jam-jar of water is usually terminal for a laptop!

For many years I used Adobe Photoshop image handling software, which is a magnificent programme, but expensive. We can, of course, use Paint, which is free on Windows accessories, but it is a bit limited so I recommend the free open-source software, Gimp. It seems to do pretty well everything I need that Photoshop does, although it is perhaps a little less user-friendly and takes a bit of getting to know.

TIP: At first I was confused by Gimp defaulting to saving images in its own native .xcf format until I found I must export the file as a jpeg.

How to prepare your photo using Gimp

Step one

One dull winter evening I noticed a bullfinch feeding on seeds of dried stems of lemon balm in my herb patch.

The light quality was terrible and I took a couple of photos with the nearest camera to hand through a slightly misted double-glazed window.

The quality of the photograph is very poor but, unlike for photographers who need pin-sharp images, this doesn’t matter for artists. We can use our skill and imagination to make a painting from even such a photo as this.

Step two

I opened the image in Gimp on my best PC.

Step three

I then cropped the photogrpah to show just the bird.

Step four

Next, I enhanced the bird by using the sharpening tool...

... and improved the colour by upping the saturation.

Step five

You can place a grid over the bird to help your drawing. Make sure you set the grid to 100 pixels per square, as the default is too small at 10 pixels, by clicking on ‘image’ and ‘configure grid’.

Step six

Finally, I saved the image as a jpeg at the highest resolution onto a memory stick that I could plug into my elderly pc in the studio.

Demonstration: Bullfinch

Birds and flowers together are usually a commercial success and this subject was destined to make a good limited-edition print, an image for one of my calendars and a greetings card.

Draw the bird.

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The background of the bird in the photo was dull but as artists we can do what we like!

I decided to place my bullfinch on a spray of pear blossom that just happened to be blooming in my garden at that time.

I took the drawing into the garden and sketched the blossom directly onto it in 2B pencil being careful to draw the scale between bird and blossom right. I didn’t want to add pink other than that of the bird so the white of the blossom and the fresh green of the new leaves would be just fine.

Bullfinches like nibbling fruit blossom buds and are seen as a bit of a menace in orchard districts so it was also in keeping with the bird’s habits.

I nearly always start my watercolours of birds by laying a simple background wash, being very careful to be accurate, particularly along edges and to preserve any white areas.

I used a worn No. 8 Da Vinci Maestro Round sable brush and quickly laid the blue-grey wash made from ultramarine and cerulean blue with a touch each of cadmium red light and lemon yellow.

I was happy that the wash was quite uneven to suggest a broken background. Just as it dried, I flicked a few drops of clean water onto the wash to create texture.

1. Next, using a fine new sharp No. 8 Da Vinci Maestro Round, I paintedthe leaves very simply with a fresh green made from lemon yellow and cerulean blue, ensuring I left the white petals carefully in outline.
2. I also mixed up a pink wash from both reds and laid it over all of the bird’s breast, lifting out some areas and adding to others to indicate the underlying form.
3. Finally I laid a wash of almost pure cerulean blue for the back of the bird and when that was dry added dark grey washes for the head.I was careful to note the white areas of the eye, wings and tail.
4. The ‘black’ areas of bullfinches have a lot of blue in them so I always add a good dollop of ultramarine to the greys and blacks.

From this point the watercolour was finished in three more sittings, each of no more than half an hour, which helps me work with an urgency that gives the work vitality.

Generally, I don’t lay more than three washes over any part of a watercolour, otherwise they become dull, and I was particularly careful not to overwork the bird’s breast, keeping it as pale as possible but with plenty of colour saturation.

I continued using the Round Da Vinci sable brushes throughout, going down to the No. 3 for the finest detail.

1. I wanted to suggest the fine feathering on the bird’s lovely blue-grey back so, splaying out a brush between finger and thumb, I laid a few dry brushstrokes of darker grey to create an overlapping mesh of faint lines.
2. Flowers are best painted very loosely in watercolour as it’s all too easy to overwork them so I just indicated the shaded petals with pale grey and marked in a few stamens and anthers in a darker shade.

1. Next I went over the darkest details of the bird with a dark grey mix and a touch of lamp black, paying most attention to the bird’s head and especially the eye.
2. It was then that I noticed that the bird’s back and the background, although of different shades of grey, were similar in tone so I strengthened the background with an additional neutral wash to help the bird and the white blossom stand out.
3. Finally, when the watercolour was dry, I erased nearly all the underlying pencil marks.

The finished painting

Bullfinch, watercolour on Schut Serene Coldpressed 300gsm watercolour paper (24x20cm)

This was cropped to the format I wanted to publish it as a greetings card and to the dimensions it would be mounted and framed.

Find out more about Chris Pendleton and his work by visiting www.pendleton.co.uk

Painting birds from photographs with Chris Pendleton

Equipment

Colours

How to paint a bullfinch, from processing a digital photograph to finished watercolour portrait

The use of photographs for reference

The benefits of photographing birds and animals

Transferring your image

Making the most of a computer

How to prepare your photo using Gimp

Step one

Step two

Step three

Step four

Step five

Step six

Demonstration: Bullfinch

The finished painting

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How to paint seagulls with watercolours

Step by step guide to painting a kingfisher by Paul Hopkinson

How to paint an eagle owl in watercolour with Kerry Bennett

How to draw a barn owl using pastel pencils

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