Egrets, Days 9 and 10

© Ellen Blonder

Big changes. I read an article recently about a relaxed brain being necessary to making intuitive decisions, so I went for a walk to try to figure out what was bothering me about this painting. I realized the egrets were too much the same scale, making the whole painting feel flat. I redrew the one on the left, and moved it away from the foreground. I'm still not sure if this is going to work, but it feels better.

Egrets, Day 8

© Ellen Blonder

More work on the leaves today. 

Egrets, Day 7

© Ellen Blonder

Slowly filling in leaf details. 

Egrets, Day 6

© Ellen Blonder

Today was about adding details to the cycad trunks and darkening the background.

Egrets, Day 5

© Ellen Blonder

At the end of a day painting leaves, I wanted to give a trunk some dimension. There's no way to paint this without simplifying drastically. The birds have to be painted later; they're going to look rough for a while.

Egrets, Day 4

© Ellen Blonder

Filling in leaves... This is going to take a while.

Egrets, Day 3

© Ellen Blonder

For a change, I'm going to try painting the leaves in back before the ones in front, so I don't have to paint in between so much. Much of the cycad on the right will be covered eventually.

Egrets, Day 2

© Ellen Blonder

Figuring out the right shade of blue for the sky before I get too far on the cycad leaves. The leaves that I started are way too bright, and the values of the blue and green are too close.

Egrets, Day 1

© Ellen Blonder

Our Kauai friends let me know when they were power-mowing their field so I could take reference photos for a cow egret painting. I've long noticed them flocking to any mowing equipment, which must agitate all the bug life to create a feast. I ended up taking over 200 photographs, although many were a blur.

I've been sketching from the photos for a while, and had a whole separate layout that included nine birds, but I settled on this, with two birds because if felt like a stronger layout. Here's the sketch transferred to a 22 x 27-inch canvas with the first part of underpainting. I plan to put several cycads in the background.