Heidi

I think that I improved on the sketching and definitely caught the green light through the foliage in the background better.  Still can improve on the overall watercolour techniques.

Practicing with Reference Photos This is something that I could definitely practice a lot.  Perhaps I should have started with something a little easier.  I soon discovered that there were lots of aspects of this bird that were very tricky, like all the streaking, barring and chevrons.

Definite room for improvement!  I thought I was starting with a simple, not too difficult group of colours to mix.  But I have a bit of a challenge with purples.  My pallet doesn't have a purple, so I started mixing reds and blues and there were lots of "mud" colours as a result.  I didn't notice the colour of the surf around the rocks until much later in this process, what a great discovery!

I used the proportion technique to draw two marsupials that were outside my tent at a recent campsite in Northern Tasmania.  I used the length of the head as my initial measurement.  It made me realize that the Tasmanian Pademelon is a very round animal!  It also has a proportionally larger head to body size, which might be because this was a very young animal, but the Bennett's Wallaby was an adult.  The negative shapes helped to draw the legs more accurately than I ever have before!  I live in Tasmania, so have tried to draw these species a few times before but have greatly improved with these techniques.

I compared two species of gum trees in an area of forest that had a prescribed fuel-reduction burn about 12 months ago.  These gums almost always survive fire and it was interesting to look at the differences in the post-burn growth of two trees side-by-side. I felt that the exercise was incomplete until I went home to look up which species these were.  (There are 29 species of Eucalypt in Tasmania where I live.)  Knowing which species I was comparing somehow made the observation seem more satisfying for me. I thought about comparing a third species, but it wasn't a gum, it was Banksia, which I decided was too different for this comparison.  But I started to look at the tree more closely anyways as they were all dead, none survived the fire. They need fire to open the large hard seed cones, which had me ready to start drawing again and making different observations.  So this very focused, close-up exercise was interesting for me.

Thanks for including your work space in your photo!  I like to imagine what everyone else's palette and environment might be.