Painting has begun

    I added a second coat of gesso last night, to prepare for today's painting session.  I am following the painting guidelines in Al Jordan's half-size osprey book, although not necessarily in the same order because of the difference in the poses of his carving and mine.

    I started by applying three coats of a dilute mixture of 90% warm white and 10% raw umber on the undersides of the tail and the primary and secondary feathers.  Once that was completely dry, I turned the carving over and applied three coats of a thin nutmeg brown color over the entire back of the body, tail, and wings.  Not much of this nutmeg color will show through at the end, but hints of it will still be there.  The back and upper side of the wings will be much darker when the painting is done.  Here are the photos:

    The colors and patterns don't look quite right at the moment, but I am trusting the professional's painting instructions.  The dark spot on the bird's breast between the extended legs is the hole where the clear acrylic rod will be inserted to support the bird on the stand.  Speaking of the stand:  I have decided to make the stand an oval, and I drew an oval shape on the practice stand using the old trick of three pins and some string.  Worked like a charm.  I will cut out the oval shape with my saber saw and set the bird on the stand to see if it is stable.

     Lona took some photos of me working, a couple of which are posted below.  The pages visible in the background are from the painting section of Al Jordan’s book.

    The next painting steps will be to add dark bands to the undersides and topsides of the tail feathers and to the primary and secondary feathers on the wings, which will be difficult for an amateur painter like myself.  these bands are visible in the pictures in the book in the background.  It will require some careful planning, matching of the bands on the upper and lower sides of the feathers, and some washes of a darker color over these feathers to blend the colors together and accentuate the leading edges of the feathers.  I will just follow the instructions and see what happens!

    Enough for now, the painting took about two hours, since I had to let each layer of paint dry before adding the next.  The reasons for using thin washes of color is to preserve the texturing of the feathers, which took such a long time to do.  One thick layer of paint would fill in all the burn lines representing the barbs of the stiff feathers; three thin washes will achieve the same color but preserve the feather details.

    Total time: 113 hours.