Recently I’ve been trying a new thing where I start paintings with an underpainting in light washes of my favorite bright colors, then build “realistic” colors on top of that. This is a way to get a sort of lovely pastel glow through the painting.
Mourning Dove
This was my technique for the mourning dove in my birds project. After studying these reference photos…
I knew I wanted to bring out the pink undertones of the feathers in the face and chest, as seen in Joshua J. Cotten’s photo, as well as the blue/lavender undertones in the back feathers, as seen in Jack Bulmer’s photo. So I decided to paint the bird as just pink and blue first. While I was in the underlayer, I made the background yellow. In the second layer, I added the gray/browns for the bird and the blues/greens to make the background into leaves.
I liked how this came out, and I’m looking forward to trying this technique again!