Wednesday, 21 January 2015

Against The Wind

Inspired by a Lars Jonsson piece 'Against all winds', here's my attempt at portraying a big gull facing the wind on a blustery Sunday morning! I thought this Herring Gull, stood between the perching posts, would make for an interesting pic. Replacing Great Black-backed Gulls with an Herring and masterfully applied oils for coloured pencil and you have my version! Hopefully the incoming waves don't resemble a blue ploughed field, as earlier attempts did! It's obviously very difficult to portray these conditions from memory but if the 'waves' resemble waves it's a success! I won't reveal how many hours work went into it, though!
                                    Field sketch of Herring Gull, Old Moor, 11th Jan 2015
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4 comments:

  1. Anonymous26 January 2015 at 11:13

    A marked improvement in confidence and technique over the past six months; keep it up! I'm hoping that seeing your work inspires me to get off my *ss too! Have you tried using digital painting software at all? All the materials without the clearing up afterwards! If you're interested, let me know and I'll send you details of the software I use, which can be downloaded free - why miss the opportunity to try?

    Paul

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  2. Unknown2 February 2015 at 13:01

    Hi Paul,
    Sorry, is it Paul Leonard - long-time illustrator of the Sheffield bird report? Whatever, thanks for your comments. You're the first person to post any! No, I've never tried anything like that, so I'll give it a go! I enjoy using coloured pencils but the lack of work produced in this medium by serious bird artists does make me realize the limits of what can be achieved!
    Kind regards

    Russ

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  3. Anonymous4 February 2015 at 12:40

    Hi Russ; yes it is. Please don't let anyone give you the impression that coloured pencils are for kids! Just because the 'big-leaguers' don't appear to use them doesn't mean that they aren't a serious artistic medium. I got fed up with washing out brushes a few years ago and started using 'crayons' instead. By mixing brands and types of pencil and using different grounds, you can get some surprisingly painterly effects. Colour mixing is done by layering and its quite therapeutic and very satisfying when you get into it. As for digital, I use Artrage which has many of the tools found in Corel Painter (the 'industry standard') but is simpler and more intuitive to use and is much much cheaper (currently about £30 as opposed to Painter's £260). Don't be fooled by the low price; its a great bit of software. A demo version with restricted functionality can be downloaded here - http://www.artrage.com/demos/ - why not give it a go? The only thing is that you really need a tablet in order to exploit all its features to the full as its very difficult to do precision work with a mouse. Whilst I'm on, is there a way that we could correspond directly, rather than through the blog? It would be great to exchange ideas etc, if you would be interested to do this; let me know and we'll work something out. Keep up the good work ...

    Paul

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  4. Unknown5 February 2015 at 14:02

    Hi Paul,
    Thanks for this - very interesting. Yes, it would be great to correspond! I've been a long -time admirer of your work. My email address is russellbolandrussb@hotmail.com
    Once again, thanks for the positive comments.
    Kind regards

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