Lori Bentley Week#52

Happy Christmas to everyone.
To My fellow washers - well done on making it to the end and adding your own ideas and experiments to our 2015 project. I have enjoyed it thoroughly... but please wait a year or two before you decide to do this again. :)

To our readers who followed our sometimes erratic journeys with paint, thanks for sticking with us - I hope you have been inspired to put brush to paper.

To our contributors: thanks for rising to the monthly challenge when we didn't have the time to.It was great to see how you interpreted the challenges.

Finally, having posted the alphabet since August, I thought it would be cool to show you the big picture:

 

Wishing you all a colourful 2016.

LORI

Lori Bentley Week #51

Second to last post.

Y is for Yellowbill

 Colours: Indigo, Antwerp Blue, Cadmium Yellow.

I enjoyed creating the letter as an almost negative shape. I did this because I felt the bird was painterly enough and that to put colour in the letter would detract from the whole.

Finally:

Z is for Zebra Waxbill

Colours: Very watery Sepia, Windor Orange, Cadmium Red, Gamboge Yellow

Thank for plodding through this alphabet with me, see you for the final next week.

Lori Bentley Week #50

Crikey! I can't believe it's almost the end of the year - only two more posts after this one!
I am therefore cramming in three in this post. All using black/darks in some way

W is for Whydah  (Paradise Whydah)- these birds with their impossible tails can often be seen dipping over the grass as they seem to battle to stay in the air.

Colours: Lamp black, Prussian Blue, Windsor orange, Quinacridone red

S is for Secretary Bird. The largest flying bird in Africa with an appetite for snakes, which is why I put the "S" where it is.

Colours: Blue Black, Perylene Maroon with touch of Windsor Orange

P is for Penguin (Macaroni Penguin) because they are so funny.

Viridian and Alazarin Crimson dark shade. Cadmium yellow

Lori Bentley Week #49

U is for Usimbiru Barbet

I used quite a few techniques from the monthly challenges with this fellow. Masking fluid (May) for the spots. Toothbrush splattering (March) to emphasize his spottiness and a dark shade (June) made up of two other colours.

Colours used: Viridian and Alazarin dark combo, Cadmium yellow light, Indian red.

Lori Bentley Week #48

T is for Turaco (knysna turaco)

Hookers green, Turquoise, dioxizane violet, indigo, perylene maroon.

X is for Xavier's Greenbul

Olive and Perylene Green with a dash of Lemon yellow. Indigo letter.

Lori Bentley Week #47

 R is for Racket-tailed Roller

cobalt turquoise light. Burnt umber mixed with burnt sienna

Lori Bentley Week #46

I really enjoyed doing this one.

Q is for Quelea

I used a flat brush to get the effect of the feathers.

Colours: Perylene maroon melding into Quinacridone gold. Burnt Umber for details.

Lori Bentley Week #45

O is for OWL - pearl-spotted owl

Masking fluid used with a sepia wash, Yellow bits are quinacridone gold.

And because I am trying to cram everything in before the end of the year, there is V for Vulture (Lappet-faced vulture)

 

Masking fluid with burnt umber and sepia. The face was painted in a bit of Antwerp blue and Permanent rose.

Lori Bentley Week #44

N is for Nightjar.

I have come across these nocturnal birds sitting on the ground in the middle of dirt roads in the bushveld.

They fly up at the approach of lights, and probably take the opportunity to snatch any insects attracted by the light.

Sponged yellow ochre, Sepia and Quinacridone gold. Details added in sepia and white.

Lori Bentley Week #43

M is for mousebird

These friendly birds are frequent visitors to our garden, loving any fruit we put out, especially orange slices. We don't get this particular version which is the blue-naped mousebird. We get it's drabber grey cousin.

Viridian and alazarin crimson for the grey. Cobalt violet light for the nape, Perylene Violet and Salt for the letter.

Lori Bentley week #42

L is for Lovebird (rosy-faced)

Paint colours: Olive green, Sap green, touch of perylene green and turquoise, Lemon yellow, Cadmuim red medium and golden ochre,  

Lori Bentley week #41

J was posted a few weeks back with the burnt sienna and sepia bunch, so this week is reserved for K.

Malachite Kingfisher

colours used: Quinacridone gold, Antwerp blue and Dioxazine violet in the body. Cadmium red deep and light for the beak and claws. Dioxazine Violet background with Cobalt turquoise light letter.

Lori Bentley Week #40

H is for Hoopoe

I love seeing these birds in the garden. That long beak is used for digging insects out of the ground, so you see them walking around more than you see them flying.

Colours: Burnt sienna beefed up with some Cadmium Orange. Blue Black.

Lori Bentley week #39

G is for guinea fowl

Indigo, Dioxazine violet with Masking fluid. Perylene violet for the reds

Lori Bentley Week #38

F is for Flycatcher.

For the first time I experimented with plastic wrap/cling film on washes (the jacana posted 2 weeks ago was actually painted after this one). It was quite tricky as these are quite fluffy little birds. When I painted the blue wash on the bird, I added a small piece of plastic and then shifted the folds around so that they were aligned with the direction of the feathers. This more or less worked as they do give a feathery effect with a few anomalies. once dry, I lifted off the paint on the chest section to lighten it. I like the suggestion of texture underneath.

The background was also given the cling film treatment.

Bird: Antwerp blue with details in indigo as well as the viridian and alazarin dark shade.
Background: Perylene green.

Lori Bentley Week #37

 D is for fork-tailed Drongo. Indigo, indigo and more indigo, with a touch of dark  - viridian and alazarin.

 

I is for Indigobird. Indigo is however only used around the face. Otherwise it is Prussian blue and gold ochre.

Lori Bentley monthly challenge september

Washing with coffee. Inspired by a story I read recently of people getting upset now that the frogs are coming out at night because spring in the Southern Hemisphere is on its way. The Endangered Wildlife Trust is urging people not to eradicate the frogs that are croaking all night as they are beneficial for keeping the insect population at bay. Anyway, I thought one of the solutions would be very strong coffee in the morning... frog induced coffee :).

Taking part in this challenge was pretty easy as I always have a pot of coffee on hand on the weekends - no frogs required :)

The challenge here is getting the darks. As you can see the range of tones in this wash is quite large. I started by creating one wash on the parts where I wanted colour. The places I wanted to be darker got coffee applications over and over again. On the eye and the back, there must be at least 10 layer of coffee.
If you look closely, you will see the dark edge to the eye. I discovered that the coffee colour gravitated towards the outside of the wet area each time I applied it. So you get this cool outline to the washed area, especially if they are small and you have applied a "blob" of coffee to it.

Lori Bentley Week #36

Sepia and Burnt Sienna were used for C E and J:

Burchell's Coucal. Background with leaves drawn in masking fluid - antwerp blue and perylene green for background and letter.

Fish Eagle.

Jacana. With Cobalt turquoise light. Back ground - perylene green with clingfilm added for texture.

Lori Bentley Week #35

B is for:

BOEHM's BEE EATER

a tricky one to paint as he has black feathers with spikes of turquoise feathers at random on his mostly black breast.. So I got messy and did some splattering to compensate :)

Colours: I started with a viridian and alazarin crimzon mix for the dark. It wasn't dark enough, so added indigo. Details in Cobalt turquoise light and quinacridone red which was darkened with perylene maroon.

Lori Bentley Week #34

I had a bit of a crazy idea a couple of weeks ago. I had run out of washes and I know that I need to spend time in the studio. But work has a way of consuming time and then I don't get around to painting for ages.

I decided I needed a theme to see me to the end of this challenge. As you may have gathered, I do birds quite a lot and so decided on an Alphabet of Avians from Africa (sorry, just had to do that). I am going to explore different ways of painting them. Some of the colours may be similar, in which case I might post random letters together.

This first feathery friend is a fire-crested ALETHE, which I have to admit, I never knew existed before I started researching the birds I was going to do.

Colours used on the bird: Indian Red with a bit of Cad Orange to give it some oomph on the highlights and Indigo.