Time Spent Making Art: FOLDER #4- STUDIES #1 through 13

Thursday 26 December 2019

FOLDER #4- STUDIES #1 through 13

This last folder of tracings and studies represents some of the work involved in putting together paintings of hummingbirds. Our first trip down into the American Southwest, to a nature preserve south of Tucson, Arizona, was all about studying hummingbirds. During the week that we spent there we added some twelve species to our life list, and I came away with many ideas that inspired several paintings, drawings, and etchings. On another occasion, towards mid May, while birding in the Rio GrandeGorge, near Taos, New Mexico, I was investigated by a Broad-winged Hummingbird inspiring a large drawing and a poem....

Beauty and the Beast - Pencil Drawing

The Hummingbird

It hovered and hummed

in front of my face.

I stood very still,

and held firmly in place.

Forward,

then backward,

inspection complete,

it flashed,

its red throat,and

finding nothing to eat,

It tilted its wings,

and was gone with a squeak.

When making a realistic wildlife painting, or etching, because of the detail involved, it's necessary to make a lot of studies from life, then transfer the studies to water-colour paper, or in the case of an etching, to a metal plate. It's a lot of work, work that you'll never get paid for, but necessary. I mentioned getting compensated for your work, the fact of the matter is that most artists work for much less than minimum wage. There is little profit, but we do what we have to do driven by the need to create.

Chickadee on Goldenrod

This is a study of a Goldenrod with a gall caused by an insect, a small wasp I believe. The grub winters over in the gall then emerges in the spring in adult form. The Chickadees and woodpeckers aware of the presence of the grub inside the gall will peck it open to get at this source of food during the long winter months. Here I've transferred a Chickadee study to the drawing attempting a possible composition for a painting.