Last week I showed you a couple of birds I’d painted when I stumbled across a series of free loose bird painting tutorials, made by Tom Sheppard. Continuing with this series I’ve now painted a Kingfisher…
…and a goldfinch…

I then decided to branch out on my own and paint the original a loose blue tit, I meant to learn to paint from this series, without even looking at Tom’s blue tit tutorial.
Almost immediately I started I was kicking myself for wetting the breast first and not using broken brush strokes on dry paper like Tom had taught me. I moved on and painted the rest wet on dry. Then I looked back at the whole bird – yes, I know I should have taken a picture to show you – and realised that when I painted the breast I’d defaulted to the process and style I really love; wet on wet.
Yes, Tom’s birds are beautiful. Broken brush strokes are beautiful. But I’m not Tom and I what I love is the wet in wet process and the look of watercolour when it does it’s ‘watercoloury thing’.
I then rather botched the bird to try and make it look more like my sort of painting. It’s certainly far from a masterpiece, but here it is; neither the way I’d learned from the bird series or the way my heart would have chosen to paint it!
Hopefully next time I show you a blue tit painting it will be painted from my heart. Having said that, I certainly learnt some things from Tom – thank you Tom – and no doubt you’ll be seeing the odd broken brush stroke in my work, but from here on in, (mostly) more soft, more watercoloury pictures.
Until next time,
Bekki x
I lov the kingfisher, but do prefer the wet on wet look. I think you probably like Turner.
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Thank you. Oh no! Too many violent battleships and even his lanscapes feel a bit agressive to me.
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It seems to me that It’s valuable to learn what you don’t like as well as what you do and I think you’ve done that here. Now you are more sure what direction you want to take you work in.
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I think you’re right. I also think it’s silly to only focus on what you think you want to do. Learning as much as you can about working with this medium should make me better at handling it all round and you never know when a quick flick of a technique I’m not particularly interested in doing, might just be the right thing for a painting.
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Awesome art work love the birds
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Thank you 🙂
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The kingfisher is spot on! Learning what you don’t like is just as important as learning what you do. They’re fab 😊
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Thank you. It is. I realised today it also really built my confidence in mixing colours and working from a minimal number of colours.
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