June 24, 2018 – With the birth of Henry, our first grandchild, I stopped painting for a while and created toys and books for him each month of his first year. He is now 11 months old and it is time for me to return to my painting. My favorite piece so far is “Ladies who Lunch or Blowing in the Wind” so I decided to spend more time on egrets in groups in the salt marsh. I have taken so many photographs of them feeding and resting year round out our back window that I need to do a whole collection of paintings to share them all.
I selected a photo from May 21, 2017 with a whole grouping of snowy egrets with the early spring grasses in the salt marsh. It was taken at 5:18:05 am with a Canon PowerShot SX530 HS camera. I covered the canvas with yellow ochre underpainting and then drew the outlines on the surface. I then blocked in the darkest areas and shadows, the lightest areas, and started on the middle shades with blocks of tones.
Once the beginning blocking was done, I was able to adjust some of the drawing and started to fill in with a closer set of colors and tones. I worked mostly on greens and blues and the bank of the marsh. The colors were hard to get right and the shapes and reflections didn’t look real. Had to keep looking at the photograph to get more detail.
I noticed that the shadows were a bit too warm and needed to be more grey blue than purple or brown. I also noticed that the reflection had almost a line where the water began with a darker shadow. I added in the shadow line and layered on more blue grey.
A little more work on the marsh bank and it is starting to look more realistic. I am getting the sun on the egrets, but need to get more sun on the grasses. The reflections are looking better on the egrets, but I see some drawing that I need to fix. It is starting to shape up and look like a real painting. I need to breathe life into it and add some movement to the water. I’ll just keep on painting what I see until I get it right.
jackie atkins design 