Heathcliff

A Hummingbird That Actually Looks Like A Hummingbird

After I finally finished the vulture I’d been struggling with a few weeks ago, after all those various shades of white following the white owl as well, I wanted to work with some serious color. I still do. What’s coming next will be a challenge as I hope to not use any white at all, although I thought I wouldn’t use white on the new hummingbird either. But, as you can see, there are several white tones, which originally started out as silver. In person, if you look closely, you can see flickers of silver in the undercoat, and bits of a coppery gold too. There is quite a lot of that coppery gold in the forehead feathers, but most of it blinks through repeated green washes to mimic the way a real hummingbird’s iridescence flashes and glows. And by the way, since the whole image is 16x16”, this hummingbird’s head is noticeably bigger than my own. These birds are becoming monumental, and soon they’ll be even bigger again. I might switch back to wood panels when that time comes since framing the paper ones is getting expensive. There’s always canvas but I don’t like the texture or the awkward folded corners that demand to be framed. Smooth wood panels that I can paint the sides of work best for me. Yes, I could paint a stretched canvas, but it wouldn’t be very tidy. And tidy, in case you can’t tell, is very important to me.