Bird Skull Still Life

I set up this bird skull (goose or duck? I’m still unsure) with a sheet of my favorite green paper and a copy of Crime and Punishment. It had the perfect color of red.

I had just finished Marshall Vandruff’s perspective course and I was excited to start using what I had learned in more practical applications. I had fun drawing vintage appliances in different rotations, but natural science illustration is my thing.

With my new knowledge, I noticed more points I could use and make sure they were in perspective. They’re the lines that continue off the skull. They hardly converge, but that’s how it was! Recently I learned that for smaller subjects (the example was portraits), the lines don’t need to converge. It’s so minimal in most cases that it can be ignored. That’s also the nice thing about organic forms.

The next step is a watercolor wash. I turn the sketch layer to multiply, lower the opacity, then paint on a new layer underneath. This is just an underpainting to get a feel for the colors and values. I’ll start to pump it up in the next stage.

The next stage is a ton of color tiles! A fairly hard brush with a bit of hue and saturation jitter is a great way to play with color. I try to avoid blending for as long as I can. Personal preference, but I feel that if I get into smoothing things out too soon I might have to work over it again if the colors or values aren’t working.

Final stage! Oftentimes I call it done on the previous stage, but I want to build up my stamina to spend more time on a painting. It’s not exactly realism, but it takes it a bit further than the color study.

✧Brush Packs - Watercolor MaxPack, Oil MaxPack

✧Brushes - MaxU Watercolor Flood Clean, MaxU Impressionist, MaxU Form Shader

I used more brushes than this, but these did the bulk of the painting. I did this one before I started my Patreon so I didn’t note all the brushes.