One for Life - Original Palette Knife Painting of Birds

Exactly a month back, there was a weekly challenge on DPW. It was on the theme of Valentine's Day and we had to paint a pair of animals/birds that mated for life. Now, I am a sucker for love stories and feel good stories and I just *had* to do this challenge. It was besides a great opportunity to paint swans as I shy away every single time from painting white subjects. White and seeing colours in white gives me nightmares. 

One for Life
Oil on board, 18 by 24 cms (7 by 9.5 inches)
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This painting is based on a reference from morguefile. I loved the lighting in it and knew it was going to be a huge task with all those rocks and everything else. I felt that the palette knife would be good for doing stones and rocks and instinctively started the painting with the knife. This was probably not a great idea that everytime I sat to paint, I was questioning if it was the best approach. But every time I was tempted to pull out my brushes instead, the image kind of screamed to go on with the palette knife. All part of an artist's life. 

Anyway, I continued with the palette knife and I loved the effects it brought out. The shapes in the water and the feathers are all way better in real than in this image. Hope you like it! 

Ms.Glowing beak - Original Bird Portrait in Oils

I loved this bird reference in morguefile. I was looking for some more owls but a few eagles turned up too. No complaints, as I love most of them. This fella was great fun to do and it suited well as an "end-of-palette" piece after my still life yesterday. I could mix a variety of greys with everything that was left over on the palette. How cool is that! 

Ms.Glowing Beak
Oil on board, 6 by 6 inches
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What's up?! - Original Textured Bird Portrait in Oils

What's up?!
Oil on Board, 6 by 6 inches
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I usually shy away from too close crops. This one just drew me in. After a long time, I am so thrilled to be painting birds again and I am having a blast. There are a couple of more birds in the works, stay tuned.

Look at me - Original Palette Knife bird portrait

Look at me!
Oil on board, 6 by 6 inches
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Painted from a reference in morguefile.

Up close - Original Palette Knife Bird Portrait

It's been a while since I painted with the knife, and I was itching to an exclusively knife piece. I wanted to have some fun with a bird portrait, but something that I haven't painted earlier. As I was browsing morguefile, this owl just popped out and said "Paint me!" :-) I could not refuse. 

Up Close
Oil on board, 6 by 6 inches
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30 Paintings in 30 Days - #6

Making heads turn
Oil on board, 18 by 24 cm (approx. 7 by 9.5 inches)

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30 Things about me - #6 - I love painting with the palette knife
Palette knife painting is something I discovered by accident a few years ago. I used to slap paint randomly and really liked the effect. But until last year, I did not pursue it properly. I tried the knife on just about every subject I could find and when they weren't really suited for some, I found myself frustrated. It was then that I decided that I would paint with the knife only when I feel it would work with the image, and not for everything under the sun.

Now I use the knife mainly for doing bird portraits and I find the effects fantastic. The knife gives a texture to the birds that suits the subject so well. There are very many roosters coming this year too.:) I try to mix up paintings with the knife and brushes, so that I don't lose touch with either. Check out a couple of detailed shots below.

Bee Eater - Detail 1

Bee Eater - Detail 2

SOLD - Rooster #5 - Palette knife bird portrait

Rooster #5
Oil on board, 5 by 7 inches
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Black Beauty! - Original Palette Knife Painting in Oils

A few days back, I received an email from someone asking if I had ever thought about doing palette knife paintings of animals, rabbits in particular. It gave me a spark and made me think "why not?". After all, animals with their furry bodies are perfect for directional strokes with the knife. They will look lovely when textured. So I went ahead and gave this a shot. It was good fun, painting a predominantly black subject without using any black. I used a little more colour in the lighter areas and generally had fun. It was good to experiment since it is the first time I am doing an animal portrait of any sort. 

Black Beauty
Oil on board, 18 by 24 cms (7 by 9.5 inches)
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SOLD - Rooster #3 - Original Palette Knife Bird Painting in Oils

Gosh the roosters continue to mesmerise me! What gorgeous colours and stunning eyes they have! What attracts me to painting birds, is their eyes. Which is why I do not prefer to paint the whole bird, I love to capture the eye and a close up of their faces. And I absolutely love images of birds looking directly into the cameras :-) 

This was by far the most challenging of the roosters, and one of the difficult palette knife paintings that I have done. Reading values within various shades of red was a huge challenge and at every step along the way, I took a b/w image of my work in progress to see if I am on the right track. So that means I have some WIP images to show you :-) 

Rooster #3
Oil on board, 5 by 7 inches
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Check out the progress of my painting from sketch to finish. I usually directly sketch on my gessoed panels.

Rooster #3 - Work in Progress

Of course, it goes without saying that the rooster paintings would have great presence when hung together. Check out a collage of the 3 paintings so far, though there will be more to come.

Roosters
Oil on board, 5 by 7 inches each
Painted exclusively with the palette knife.

Your feedback is welcome! :-)

Rooster #2 - Original Palette Knife Bird Painting in Oils

We had some awesome weather over the weekend, ice cream eating weather ;-) So we were out for walks on both days and I managed to get quite a few decent shots for paintings. I should be back to painting figures soon with the new references. Until then, enjoy some more roosters. :)

Rooster #2
Oil on board, 5 by 7 inches
SOLD

Rooster #1 - Original Palette Knife Bird Painting

I have been meaning to paint roosters for as long as I can remember, I love their personalities and colorful bodies. And what more, I know they would make perfect subjects for palette knife painting. So here it is, finally my first rooster. And let's just call him Rooster #1, as I know for a fact that there will be more to follow. Soon. :-)

Rooster #1
Oil on board, 5 by 7 inches
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SOLD - Saffron Toucanet - Original Palette Knife Bird Painting

This little bird was yet another challenge in the group Paint Colorful Birds for Fun, on Facebook. What a lovely bird with such bright colors. I prefer to do them with the palette knife. 

This painting is also my entry to the Premix Color challenge on DPW. So I mixed all the colors beforehand and my palette was fully ready before even touching the canvas. It is completely opposite to how I normally work, I mix colors as I go. This was a great learning, different experience and saved so much time in the painting process itself!

Saffron Toucanet
Oil on Board, 6 by 6 inches
SOLD

Here's an image of my palette before starting painting. This is the neatest my palette has been, ever! 

One thing the premixing process ensures is that we think well beforehand about the values and colors, and don't discover midway that they are way off. I might give it a shot again!

SOLD - Angry Bird - Original Palette Knife Oil Painting

I follow watercolour artist Sharon on facebook, and every month she holds a challenge where artists get to paint from a photo. The last couple of challenges were all animals and I loved looking at various interpretations though I did not participate in them. As I have mentioned a few times earlier, I am not very fond of painting animals. When she posted this eagle for the February challenge, I had made a mental note to take part. I had totally forgotten about it until it popped up again on my Facebook feed. 

I totally loved the reference and at first sight it just screamed "Palette Knife"! So of course, knife it had to be! Also, I have been neglecting my knives for a while now and thought this would be a good opportunity to warm up the knife painting muscle a bit.:-)

Angry Bird
Oil on Board, 6 by 6 inches
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I loved the reference, which is by wildlife photographer Gary Jones. The fire in the bird's eyes begged to be painted and I hope I have done justice to it. Do take a look at the various entries here, they are all amazing! Thank you so much for hosting the challenge, Sharon. It was a blast. 

Go after it - original oil painting of children

The little boy chasing his football again. I painted this one as a companion piece to my earlier painting "Kick off". The colours are a bit more muted in this one I think. I don't think I'll ever get enough of painting kids, one of my absolute favourite subjects to paint. 

Go after it
Oil on board, 7 by 5 inches
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This is my 5th painting in the 30 in 30 days challenge. Unfortunately, my vacation ends today and I hope I can get some painting done even amidst my work week starting tomorrow. Oh well! 

"Say cheese" - 30 in 30, #4

I happened to spot these kids at a popular tourist attraction a couple of years ago. While I wanted to capture the girl taking a picture of one of the boys, I was pleasantly surprised to find the onlooker boy also in my reference. I have used a mix of the brush and the palette knife for this painting. The girl is one using the palette knife, and I have also used the knife for the foreground. The farther steps and the two boys are all done with the brush. They were two tricky for the knife and I could not risk messing up the painting. 

Say Cheese
Oil on board, 7 by 5 inches
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If you like my work, make sure to "like" my page on Facebook and subscribe to my blog by mail so that you don't miss a post. Have a good Sunday!

My cozy corner - 30 in 30, #3

Took on another larger one today, this one too is a 12 by 6 inch piece. And managed to complete it from sketching to signing all in about 4 hours. Looks like all isn't lost yet.:-) 

Long ago, I got one of Carol Marine's short art tutorials on DPW, one where she explains about color mixing and saturation. Though I got the tutorial quite a while back, I did not get to do a full fledged painting from what I learnt. I tried to make use of it here, this piece does not use any tube of green paint. All the green is mixed from the primaries. This whole piece uses 2 types of yellow, 2 types of blue and 1 red. That's all about it. 

As a self taught artist who has not yet had the opportunity to attend a workshop with anyone, the tutorial was so informative and useful. It is of course common knowledge that one can paint only with the primaries, but Carol's demo videos get the point across very well. I loved it. There is still a long way to go for me with respect to handling edges and stuff, but I am immensely enjoying the process and learning a lot. 

My cozy corner
Oil on Canvas, 12 by 6 inches
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This piece is from a reference I caught at one of the city parks. They are one of my favourite places to watch people. A perfect sunny summer day, lost in a book. Such ideal settings are stuff that I can only dream of right now, considering my 1 year old just doesn't give me the time. So dream I do, and paint my dreams.:) 

I have also painted it entirely with the palette knife. I find the knife my ideal tool for trees and foliage. Had a lot of fun with this one.

Spring blossom - Textured floral painting in Oils

The magnolia is one flower that I never painted before. For the amount of florals that I do, it is quite something. I do have some nice references though, and when I look for the next painting, I just skim through them and never bothered to get to them. This time however, I was struggling with another painting, I do not remember which one, and then took out a fresh board and started this little piece on a whim. 

Spring blossom
Oil on board, 6 by 6 inches
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It was a great break from the figures that I was painting. Before I realized I had made good progress with it and it kind of painted itself! :) I splurged at the art store recently and among my purchases were a couple of lovely shades of pink. They were promptly put to use here. Love them pinks! :)

Let me know what you think.

Mommy's girl - Textured paintings of children in summer

Tagging along with mommy. This painting is textured, it has been painted with the palette knife. I loved doing the little girl's dress with the knife, it was just perfect for it. Let me know what you think.

Mommy's girl
Oil on board, 6 by 6 inches
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Daisies - thinking of spring..

The temperatures here dropped to record lows a couple of weeks ago and I was freezing.. This winter has actually been so mild and this sudden drop made me paranoid that spring might be delayed.. So I wanted to paint something while I wait for spring :) Rather impatiently at that!

Daisies
Oil on board, 6 by 6 inches
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Click here to bid.

If you noticed the last few paintings were all done with the brushes only, and one reason to do a flower again was the urge to pick up my knives as well. So liberating painting with the knife, as always. I did not like it initially, but almost a week after it was painted, looks quite decent to me now.

A mock-framed pic to give you an idea. :-)

Busy bee - Original Textured painting of children in summer

Busy Bee
Oil on Canvas, 5 by 7 inches
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