Painting delay for the wings

      The next step in painting the wings of the osprey carving involves the used of a dark sable color, almost black, for the banding and shading on the tail and flight feathers.  Unfortunately, when I sat down at the bench today, I learned that the sable color had I ordered is not dark at all, but almost like the nutmeg brown.  I tried darkening it with several different possible complementary blue shades that I have, but couldn’t match the color swatch in Al Jordan’s book.  I tried using black to darken the sable brown, which produced something much closer to the published color, nut just a little dead-looking.  It might work in a pinch, since the color it produced was close to the color in the workbook, but I want the colors to be the same as used by the original carver/artist. 

     I then had an insight - Al Jordan used an airbrush to paint much of his carving, so I looked into airbrush acrylic colors.  Bingo!  On a carving supplies website I found the very dark sable he used, manufactured by Chroma, and ordered some.  I checked first to see if airbrush colors can be used with a brush, and they can.  The only difference between airbrush acrylics and those from a bottle or tube is that the airbrush colors are diluted in order to pass easily through the airbrush nozzle.  This actually helps, because I would not have to dilute it much or at all to use it as a wash over other colors.  I will see when it arrives, whenever that is.

  In the meantime, I may do some painting today on other parts of the carving, such as the feet, just to get something done and not lose momentum.