Friday, December 1, 2017

My Missed Hummingbird Friends

One of the things I miss most about living in central Florida is not seeing hummingbirds.  In three years I've seen a stray or two but nothing like what we had living in West Virginia. 

We had so many and spent long hours enjoying their antics as they flew around (to include our heads up under our covered porch) or fought off others over feeders.  I even had one sit on my finger and feed from a bottle cap held in my hand.........an experience I'll never forget.

The other side of that coin......living in Florida I do enjoy other birds like the cranes that visit our yard daily and other birds we never saw up north.  I am still amazed by the size of the cranes.

Here is my latest procreate color sketch to kick off the month of December.  I may not get the opportunity to watch these guys now but at least I can sketch and paint them. 






4 comments:

WWendi said...

This is Beautiful I love the soft colors that aren’t too washed out, with the touches of ink ink (as opposed to outlining ink); a technique I frequently forget to use. Very well done! I love the effect of the watercolor paper texture. I know there are a few different ways to accomplish this. One technique that I’ve been using is to import a 50% grayscale photo of the texture. Then Duplicate that layer so there’s two. I set one layer to Overlay at 100% opacity, and set the other texture layer to Hard Light at 10% opacity. I set both of those layers at the top of the stack and lock them. I sketch and paint on layers beneath. How do you do yours? I like that the texture looks fairly big.

Susan Bronsak said...

WWendi.......thank you so much........I truly appreciate your comments!

I haven't tried your method but I think I remember seeing a video showing what you described.

I took several photos of watercolor paper until one turned out OK showing off the dips and valleys of the paper that I could use as a background. I can then adjust the brightness/contrast as needed showing more or less "grain".

I copy and then paste this photo image and place at the top of the stack setting it to multiply and then locking it.

I like using that watercolor paper texture as to me it adds that something extra over what a plain background offers. :-)

Ginny Stiles said...

Why aren't you watching them here in Florida?
Our neighbors have a hummingbird feeder and we see them there all the time!
(Love this pretty little guy!)

Susan Bronsak said...

Hi Ginny......we've tried. We've put out hummingbird feeders and even have various plants we know attracts them. Not sure why we're not seeing them.