Cockatoo in Watercolor
I painted this fellow last week. I tried it with two different backgrounds, using gray and yellow for the first one, and purple and blue in the second one.
According to dexigner.co at web address, https://www.dexigner.com/news/33425 "Pantone has announced 'PANTONE 17-5104 Ultimate Gray' and 'PANTONE 13-0647 Illuminating' as the 2021 'Pantone Color of the Year.' The two independent colors were brought together to create an aspirational color pairing, conjoining deeper feelings of thoughtfulness with the optimistic promise of a sunshine filled day." I don't know about you but after the year we have all had I could use a bit of bright sunshine.
For my painting, I mixed my own gray using French Ultramarine Blue with Burnt Sienna and let the mixture do it's own thing. As you can see in painting number one, more of the blue comes through in the left side of the painting.
These guys were fun to paint. When I first attempted painting feathers last year, I made a mess of things. But continued trial and error has seen some improvement. It is something that I continue to work on with the help of Louise De Masi and her tutorials. The inspiration for the cockatoo came from this photo available free for download on Pixabay. It was taken by photographer Benita Welter.
https://pixabay.com/photos/parrot-cockatoo-bird-plumage-2509677/
Yet again, I received tremendous help and guidance from De Masi in this YouTube video in how to paint white subjects in watercolor.
Enjoy where you are today. As for our area, we are expecting a snowstorm! Looks like another work from home day for me.
Helen