Sound the trumpets! Cue the drumroll!! On your feet peasants!!!
The Great Frigate bird is on its way!
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HAHA, ok back on point, I wanted to capture this magneficent beauty in my watercolour artwork, so here goes...
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Tada! Yeah, it's underwhelming, but I'm kinda proud cuz first of all, I can't do watercolour so I guess it was as good as a try as I could get it, second of all, I'm in love with this cutie and third of all, this took like a total of 5 hours what with the planning, sketching and painting 😳
To tell you the truth, I was just scrolling through on Pinterest for something to draw and an aesthetic watercolour hummingbird caught my attention. I wanted to draw my own piece instead of referencing from that person's artwork (as SilverBeams has so kindly reminded me to try more of) but I couldn't find any pictures of hummingbirds in a suitable position to reference from.
By that time, I had already drawn the base and it looked like it was going to be a thicccc bird, so I wondered, why not draw another kind of bird?
At first I thought of the Kiwi, but then again (correct me if I'm wrong) I don't think they could fly onto trees😂😂
And for some reason, the "bird whose chest is puffed out" came to mind, so I quickly went to search about it.
As it turns out, it's called the Frigate bird! The males typically puff out their chest during mating season, and the females will usually pick the guy with the bigger chest xDD which I guess kind of makes sense in a weird way, cuz their puffed out chest kinda looks like a giant heart??
ANYWAYS, I had to reference from a LOT of diff pics for this artwork, cuz I wanted to make sure I got this cutie as accurate as possible.
So I found my references:
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(For the general shape and proportions + the blue purplish feathers)
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(For the colour of the yellow/brown/dark brown feathers)
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(For the shape of the tail)
And some others I couldn't bother to screenshot :P
Then I started sketching, before tracing it out with a drawing pen.
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And then I started painting! This was probably the longest part, because I had to make sure all the layering of colours was right and that some parts were darker than the others. I'm also pretty much a noob at watercolour and painting feathers, so that helped.
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By the way, I don't think you can really tell but in my mind the bird has just landed on the branch and so its right wing has begun to flap close (hence the blue purplish feathers covering it) and the left wing hasn't closed yet.
Oh and, I honestly only planned for the greenish things to be like some algae cuz I went over the edges of the bark with the green, but I definitely went overboard because I like drawing bushy stuff with watercolours so much (IT'S SO FUN) and I guess now they're leaves🤣
And wow, this is becoming a long chapter, so I guess...
