In the Studio with Liz Clayton Fuller

Katherine: I think we’re going to go ahead and get started now that most of y’all are rolling right on in. So my name is Katherine Welch. I’m going to be briefly introducing you to Liz here in a minute. Before I hand things over to her today. First things first. Today’s webinar is hosted from Ithaca, New York, where both Cornell University and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology are located.

So don’t mind to go ahead and roll forward to the first slide. It’s important for us to recognize the original stewards of this land, the people who have a historical and continued connection to this place and the traditional ecological knowledge held and shared from those communities. Please stay with me as I read a brief statement acknowledging and made in collaboration with the indigenous people of this area.

Cornell University is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogo̱hó:nǫɁ, the Cayuga Nation, the Gayogo̱hó:nǫɁ are members of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, an alliance of six sovereign nations with a historic and contemporary presence on this land. The Confederacy precedes the establishment of Cornell University, New York State and the United States of America. We acknowledge the painful history of Gayogo̱hó:nǫɁ dispossession and honor the ongoing connection of Gayogo̱hó:nǫɁ people past and present, to these lands and waters.

All right, Liz, I think we’re just about ready to get started.

Liz: Amazing.

Katherine: So everyone, we’re so excited to be able to visit Liz Clayton Fuller at her studio today. Liz is an accomplished science illustrator and a fine artist. Born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee. Liz holds a BFA in illustration with a minor in Art history from Savannah College of Art and design and a Certificate in Natural Science Illustration from the University of Washington.

She has created and taught field sketching courses for the Cornell University undergraduates, as well as for participants in Cornell’s adult University program. She’s also illustrated field guides created educational outreach materials, and painted visuals for scientific papers at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. And our Bird Academy team has been so lucky as to be able to collaborate together with her to create our nature journaling and field sketching course.

Liz runs her own bird art business as ipaintbirbs, where she balances her scientific illustrations with charming illustrations full of humor. So you should be seeing links to that, in the chat for, you know, we’re constantly inspired by Liz’s passion for birds and nature. Liz approaches her subjects with the wonder of first discovery and works meticulously to document them with a mix of whimsy and accuracy, inviting others to appreciate bird life, too.

Liz, it’s so great to have you today.

Liz: Thank you. Thank you for that lovely intro. I feel very cool.

Katherine: Well, you are very cool. That’s why we’re all excited to see you. So as excited as we are, Liz is going to paint for us today, and we are going to take as many of your questions as we can in the chat. But we’re also excited to let Liz show off her process. So we’re going to pause and give Liz some time to work between all those lovely questions.

So all that said, take it away Liz.

Liz: Yeah, it’s great to have you all here. Thank you very, very much for spending your mid-morning or afternoon or whatever time zone you’re in with me. I really appreciate you being here and I’m so excited to see you coming from all over. So this is my studio here in Nashville, Tennessee, and I’m going to go ahead and switch all over to my desktop view.

And today we will be painting a female Belted Kingfisher. I’m very excited to be painting a kingfisher today. Or as I like to call the female kingfisher, the “Queenfisher” because she is in fact a queen. So I’m going to be doing some painting for y’all today, and I would love to hear your questions. And I’m also going to explain a little bit about my process as I go along.

So as you can see here, I have already sketched our “Queenfisher” for today. So I know that I only have an hour with y’all, which I’m very thankful for, but I wanted to make sure that I could do as much painting as possible in our hour together. So I’m going to explain to you a little bit about how I got this sketch set up, and then we’ll start painting.

And I would love to hear your questions. And again, I’m so happy that you’re here. So first things first. I always do my sketches on a piece of tracing paper first. So I do a sketch on a tracing paper and I work out all of the details. I also decided you might notice that this. This is a fish that our Queenfisher has looks a little bit like a cookie.

And that is actually because I thought it’d be really fun considering the season to have our Queenfisher eating a little gingerbread fish cookie today. So that’s kind of part of what I do. Apart from my scientific illustration. I like to do a little bit of whimsy as well. So we’ve got, our Queenfisher eating a cookie fish today, a little gingerbread cookie.

So I got my sketch all worked out on a piece of tracing paper, and then I transferred it with transfer paper to my sketchbook page, so you can see that the sketch is all transferred and all ready to be painted. In my sketchbook, I used scrawl transfer paper, and this is actually what the transfer paper looks like. You can kind of see a ghost of the Queenfisher, where I traced my sketch and transferred it down onto my sketchbook.

So that’s kind of where we’re getting started today. And I’m just going to you’ve seen the sketch. I’m just going to kind of peel it back and let it sit up here. It’s true. We could all, you know, we all need more whimsy in our lives, I think. So I think our Queenfisher today will bring a little bit of whimsy.

So I’m going to get started mixing some colors. And if y’all have any questions right off the bat, you let me know.

Katherine: But as folks kind of catch up here and and start putting their questions in the chat, I do have a few from the Pre-Submitted question.

Liz: Amazing.

Katherine: So you know, you’ve already got your sketch down. So I think some people wondered if you have any advice for them when it comes to making their sketches look a little bit more realistic. Like how do they get the proportions just right? Where should they start?

Liz: Absolutely. So honestly, I’m going to spritz my palette a little bit, by the way, because it’s very dry in the winter and I want to keep my paint wet. I’m using gouache today, by the way. I should have said that right up front. But as far as sketching goes, honestly, knowing your subject as well as you possibly can is one of the best ways to improve your art.

Because the more you know, the easier it’s going to be to render your bird and also we’ll be talking about, more at the end of the webinar today. But I do have, a little, a little workshop coming up with Cornell that might be of interest as well. So I’m excited to tell y’all more about that.

Katherine: Yeah, we’ll get some more details about that at the end. I think.

Liz: So I’m just starting with big areas of paint, just kind of blocking them in. That’s going to be like step one today.

Katherine: So someone on the chat is curious to know, are you usually painting in the studio or are you sometimes painting in the field, or do you do a mix of both?

Liz: Great question. I am usually painting in the studio. I kind of these days like to go out to the field to kind of get inspiration and then bring back the inspo to the studio. So less field sketching these days for me, but definitely like love being in the field to get inspired for my paintings.

I’m just blocking in these big areas of like bright white here, just kind of mapping it out. Also, I think I’ve seen a couple people asking maybe if I sketch this from life or if I used a photo. So typically when I am gathering references for any one sketch, I’ll have way more than one photo. So, this Queenfisher sketch this morning, I think I looked at maybe about six different photos.

So, definitely, using photos as a guide for my sketches. I wish that I had a photographic memory of birds. That would be absolutely incredible. But, Yeah, that’s, I, I mostly work from photos.

Katherine: But in this case, it’s like a composite of photos. It’s not.

Liz: Exactly, sort of one photo. More for the pose. And then other photos kind of adding in extra details. And sometimes one photo doesn’t have everything that you need in it, so it’s nice to have just a bunch of different photos of the same bird to be like, okay, I can’t really see their feet and I need to, so I’m going to look at a different photo for their feet or for their tail feathers or their beak.

Whatever you need.

Katherine: So this is another question that came up in the pre-submitted questions. So with posing a bird like, what are you looking for when you’re thinking about how the bird should be posed? So you’re thinking about, you know, looking at different references, but like what do you value in those references?

Liz: Yeah. Great question. Obviously, you know, part of what’s still important about being a scientific illustrators that sometimes photos don’t capture everything that you want to convey about a bird in any given photo. So it’s nice as an artist to kind of be able to pick and choose aspects of it, to make it either in this case, this is just a painting sort of for whimsy and for fun and to be, you know, painting with you all today.

So there’s not anything scientific I’m trying to communicate. But when I do my scientific illustration work, oftentimes I am sort of illustrating research that someone has done. So I’ll need to show a specific thing, like maybe the plumage variation between two birds or the morphology of the beak or something. So when I’m painting just for fun, it’s a lot of like, what do I like?

What makes me happy, what feels esthetically pleasing as an artist. And then for scientific illustration, I usually have a more sort of specific directive that I need to be working towards.

So I’m just mixing up my kingfisher blue here. Let’s see.

Katherine: So when you’re mixing up these colors and you’re thinking about, you know, that that that bird that you’re trying to create kind of as a composite of different things. How are you light.

Liz:

Katherine: Like coming from.

Liz: Yeah I think it’s a great question. And also I, I have been painting for many many many years. So I kind of whip through my color mixing. So thanks everybody for just bearing with me as I, giddy up through this part as I want to make sure I can finish this painting for you all today.

But when I’m thinking about light. So what is most helpful to me as a painter is to essentially pick a light source. Right? So top left hand corner is kind of the most typical, the most typical spot that people pick to light a bird, like specifically in scientific illustration. I was told when I went to school for it that top left hand lighting is standard for scientific illustrations, right?

So I usually, try to light my bird from the top left hand corner. And, I’m going to add by the way, I’ve got a really nice blue here. It’s a little bit bright, so I’m going to add just a touch of orange to it to kind of tone it down as we are working with our color wheel and using a complementary color to just knock it back a little bit.

But yes, I’m going to try to have the light coming from the top left hand corner today.

And I think a lot of folks are asking about the reference photo. I’m using a lot of different references today, so kingfishers specifically like if you are just googling a kingfisher, depending on the lighting, the blue in their plumage can look very, very different. So I’m kind of I’ve got in front of me. My desktop is covered in different kingfisher images.

And I am sort of looking at all of them and kind of processing them in my brain and doing a composite as it comes out in the sketchbook. So I definitely recommend having lots and lots of reference photos when you are working, just so that you don’t get tunnel vision. But again, this isn’t a scientific illustration.

This is a for fun illustration. So we are, just kind of, we’re just kind of working together and, making a nice painting today.

And I’m just kind of filling in some big chunks of color. And I’m also, if you might notice, I, I am liable to talk through my entire process. So. Catherine, please just cut me off if you need to, but I’m trying to use my brush strokes in the same direction as the feathers go. Which is just kind of helpful for maintaining that feathered texture as you’re painting.

Katherine: I’m trying to make sure that we have enough room to get all this great information because, yes.

Liz: It’s hard and it is a lot of information.

Katherine: Feathers are actually one thing that people ask about. A lot of the pre-submitted questions like, how do you get a detailed feather? Is it all about the direction of the paint?

Liz: It’s a lot about the direction of the paint. And I said kind of at like the top of our webinar that like knowing your subject as well as possible is super, super, super helpful. So birds have lots of different kinds of feathers, right? Some of them are really soft and fluffy. Some of them are really rigid and like structured.

So, I think it is really, really helpful to know sort of what kind of feathers that you’re painting. So you don’t want to render those super, super soft feathers with painstaking, excruciating detail, because then they might kind of end up looking like fur instead of feathers. So, that’s something to be aware of. But yeah, knowing your subject and knowing which feathers to render, with that sort of like intense detail and which to maybe just let be a little bit softer.

Those are helpful. I think a lot of people are asking about the blues. So you might imagine that as an artist, I have acquired a lot, a lot, a lot of paints over the years. So I’m just going to kind of give y’all a a flavor of all of the blues that I have on my palette. Another thing that I like to do is I, you know, waste not whatnot.

Right. So I’ll have palettes with colors on them from a previous painting, like recently I painted some bluebirds, so I have a bunch of blues on my palette already, and so I want to not waste those colors. So with gouache, all you have to do is spritz it with a little bit of water and it will reconstitute and become like, you know, wet again so you can paint with it.

So I’m using a lot of different, a lot of different colors and some colors that are just like leftover on my palette from previous paintings. So it’s hard to say exactly what I’m using today, but I hope that kind of gives you a little bit of a sense of what’s what’s going on on the palette.

Let’s see. I’m kind of popping in a couple highlights as I go as well, just to make sure that I don’t lose them later. Because I’ve kind of you might notice with my sketch, I’ve blocked in a bunch of big areas of plumage, but within those areas, you know, the color varies quite a bit. So yes, I do have the color blue very covered in my in my palette today.

Katherine: Well, this was a my favorite question, I think, from the ones that we got submitted. Great. So, we all know that when people who aren’t scientific illustrators make bird art, sometimes they, they make artistic decisions. So what is your favorite inaccuracy in in mass market bird art?

Liz: It’s a good question. And there are a lot I think, honestly, my biggest recommendation is to just look closely at bird feet. I feel like they never quite have the right number of toes. They are not usually going in the right direction. So definitely, bird feet usually get the, the short end of the stick in the, mass market, bird art world, I guess.

I’ve also seen, sort of feathers layered the wrong way. That’s a little more niche because I’m a scientific illustrator and I might like, notice those things, but, I saw a Wren one time whose tail feathers were basically upside down of how they were supposed to be. So, definitely, once you are looking, if you’re looking for inaccuracies, you’re probably going to find a few.

Katherine: Where it’s hard to learn that subject.

Liz: It’s true. It takes many, many years, that’s for sure.

Katherine: What would you recommend for people who are trying to be more accurate?

Liz: Well make sure you’ve got a field guide that you love that is illustrated because seeing how scientific illustrators illustrate field guides, it is truly a masterclass in like economy of information. Right. Like they are making only as much, you know, brushstrokes as they need. They are helping you identify the bird based on just a couple of details like definitely look at field guide artists and see how they are representing birds and how they are representing plumage and things like that.

And that will definitely kind of help inform your brain of the direction to go when you are representing plumage. I also, I should say, this is a filbert brush. I think a couple people have asked about brushes. I, I have probably 20 different brands. I just kind of collect brushes as I exist. That’s just what happens when you’re an artist is you just amass supplies.

It’s kind of like the blues. Right? So, this is a filbert. And sometimes when I am doing a painting, I kind of get tunnel visioned into a single brush for that painting. So right now I’m just, like, locked in with this filbert and we’re going to write it out until I need to do some more detailed areas.

So starting with a big brush is another tip that I have to kind of block in the bigger areas.

Working on a shadow color over here. Oh, there’s my dog barking if y’all heard or she had to make herself known in the webinar, of course.

Katherine: What’s the full studio experience?

Liz: It’s the full. That is literally exactly what it’s like to be in the studio with me. Okay.

Katherine: So here’s a question from chat. Yeah. How did you come to the career of, science illustrator?

Liz: Yeah. Great question. I did go to art school. I studied illustration. I kind of wasn’t sure what kind of artist that I wanted to be. I just knew that I wanted to be an artist. So I went through school trying a bunch of different kinds of art, trying to figure it out. And I took a scientific illustration class and it just kind of all clicked into place for me.

Then I realized that, you know, I was kind of trying. And interestingly, now I’m a lot more whimsical with my work. But, back in the day, it was feeling very forced. You know, I was like, I’m not whimsical like all my other peers. Like, I don’t know what kind of art to make. And I was like, wait a minute, with scientific illustration, you can just paint what is already beautiful and exists in the world, you know, like, that’s amazing.

So I fell in love with birds because I bought a book about birds. It was like birds of the world. And I said, birds are pretty cool. And that has snowballed. That one book purchase, snowballed into my entire career. And a also just a love of birds that has, like, really blossomed over the years. So, that’s how it started.

Yeah. That’s kind of the roots.

Katherine: We’re so happy you found that magic.

Liz: Yeah. It’s nice to be, you know, working with you all. And, I just, like, love the lab so much. And, it’s really fun to be able to, you know, represent birds, in scientific illustration and also giving them a little, you know, gingerbread fish for fun.

Katherine: Do you have any guides that you recommend for other people?

Liz: I really like, obviously, you know, Sibley is the guy. I also really like, Roger Marie Peterson’s work. I think both of them really, represent birds in a way where you can learn sort of unique things from both Sibley and Peterson. So I would say those are my favorite. And maybe someday I’ll be recommending my own field guide.

Who knows who. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Katherine: So, yeah, how are we doing that? How we’re doing shadows.

Liz: Yeah, I’m kind of blocking in some shadows. So remember, I’m trying to kind of have that, light source coming from top left and then across down to the right. So I’m making sure to land some big shadows in the wing and on sort of the outside of the bird here as well. They have a little white shoulder that I forgot to paint in, but I can add that back.

And I’m trying to, and sort of that like a feather detail that I was mentioning to you, like, so the head feathers of a kingfisher are, like, very, very iconic, right. So I want to make sure that we are feeling that like very spiky, very punk rock texture that they’re kind of working with, which is, like I said, what they’re known for.

So I want to make sure I’m adding some really hard lines up here to maintain that texture. And then as I’m sort of moving down towards the chest feathers, there’s a lot of like way sort of softer feathers. And so I’m going to start just like implying a pattern of feathers here. But I don’t want to spend too much time doing that because I don’t want it to start looking less soft and more structured.

So I’m just kind of like working on building and building the detail and the shadow. That’s like, that’s what makes your art pop, right? Is having it look three dimensional. So I’m definitely kind of pushing and pulling on the shadow and trying to start to make our queen for sure, a bit more three dimensional.

And I’m cleaning off my brush. My paint water is looking almost the exact same color as my paint water cup, which is very fun and silly.

Katherine: So you’re using gouache paints like.

Liz: Yes.

Katherine: So is that where where you usually work or is that your what’s your favorite thing to work with?

Liz: I used to be Team Watercolor up and down and now I’m a total gouache girl. Like I, I love gouache. As they said in the chat just now, gouache is a little bit thicker than watercolor. So sort of the difference. My main difference, I think, of gouache is like watercolors cousin. And the main difference is watercolor is meant to be sort of watered down and used in these translucent layers and layers and layers.

Gouache is really punchy and really opaque, and so you get to just sort of like mix these like thick, bold colors. If anyone is like looking to try gouache, the perfect sort of palette consistency for your wash is like, the consistency of heavy cream. So it’s like a little bit thicker. You don’t want to water it down as much and you just sort of use it, in this like, punchy way.

And I don’t know, I’ve just really, really fallen in love with it. And it’s water soluble, like watercolor. So I’ve got all of these, you know, like this is totally dry paint on my palette, but all I have to do is spritz it with some water and it will, come back to life. So it’s just convenient and fun and bright.

And, I don’t know, I’m just kind of in love with it.

Katherine: It looks gorgeous.

Liz: Yeah. It’s, it’s a really, it’s a fun. It’s a fun medium. And I do feel like it is almost. Well, you know, everyone will feel differently, but I almost feel like it’s a little bit more accessible than watercolor. Sometimes it feels a little bit more forgiving to me. So, you can definitely layer it, and build up those, like, highlights and values and kind of do this like push pull thing that you can’t really do with watercolor because watercolor hates to be disturbed.

Once you have already put it down on the paper. So, if you’re thinking about trying a new painting medium, I really, I really do highly recommend gouache.

I’m mixing her famous belt color, so one of the reasons that I love kingfishers, other than the fact that, like, everywhere I have lived, in Ithaca and Seattle and Nashville, there have always been kingfishers around. I love it. The female is more colorful than the male with her big rusted red belt. So, yeah, I’m I’m mixing her her belt color right now.

And we’re going to go ahead and sort of get that blocked in.

And thank you all again for joining me in the studio today.

I’m happy to show you the process.

Katherine: The nice thing about the the Queenfisher’s belt. This is what makes the Queenfisher The queen fisher, right? Yes.

Liz: Exactly. This is what makes her a queen.

And I just looked up and saw black or brown to tone your. Gosh, I definitely use black to tone my gouache and white to tinted. I think, you know, if any of y’all have taken art classes or if you went to art school, you get a lot of sort of intensity about don’t add black to your painter, don’t add white to your paint.

And I think you should do what works for you. So that’s what I’ll say about, some, some rules, you know, it’s okay to break them. So definitely if adding white and black to your colors is working for you, I support you.

Katherine: So here’s another pre-submitted question for you.

Liz: Sure.

Katherine: How if you do experience art block? That’s the first question I do. What do you do to get out of it?

Liz: It’s a good question. So for me, being a professional artist, I do I do experience art book. I do experience burnout. And something that has really helped me is when I am feeling stuck. If I just keep trying to paint birds, I just feel more and more stuck. So something that I would recommend is trying a new medium.

Totally put yourself out of your comfort zone and honestly suck at something. That’s my that’s my advice because it gets you out of your head. So try. If you’re a painter, try ceramics, try needle felting. Do literally anything that you’re not already an expert in and it will help sort of humble you and bring your creativity back. For me anyway, that has worked.

So I recently was sort of dabbling with pastels, which is a new medium for me, and that was really helpful. So I would say, just push yourself out of your comfort zone and try to get out of your head because that’s that’s hard. It’s a hard place. It’s a hard place to be when you’re a creative person, then you are struggling to create.

So I feel I feel you.

Okay, I’m going to fill in some of these areas in the wing that I left intentionally blank to come back in with my more mid toned blue here.

And we need to make sure to make her shoulder white.

And for scientific illustration, at this point I might be counting wing feathers. Luckily, I do not have to do that today. I am just getting to do a nice little nice little Queenfisher painting for y’all. That is very chill.

I’m going to mix up a little bit of. So we’ve got our white sort of blocked in very very bright. I’m going to mix up a nice little shadow color. I like to use a little bit of purple in my shadows when I am shading white feathers. I just think it looks really, really nice. And cooler colors push things farther away into space, and warmer colors bring things forward so let’s see if we can get a little shadow in here.

Katherine: I do have a question about yes, your toned paper. Yes. So why y toned paper?

Liz: It’s a great question and I get that a lot. So for me, starting my palette is scooting away from me slowly starting on toned paper is like starting from a middle ground, and then I can push things brighter and push things darker. But I’m starting from the middle. When you’re starting on white paper, you’re starting on this like blindingly bright, lightest value you can possibly get.

So I just feel like starting from a middle ground helps me understand my light and shadow a little bit better, and work on those relationships and that that push pull I was talking about a little bit easier. Okay, let’s see if the shadow is going to show up for us. Nice. Put that kind of under the chin there and a couple feathers here and then along the back of the neck.

Great. And then down here as well.

Because we’re trying to keep that light source in mind.

In this part back here is going to be almost fully in shadow. Maybe the edge of it would be kind of catching a little bit of light. Nice.

Katherine: So someone is interested to know how you got started drawing birds specifically. Was it though that same that guide?

Liz: Yeah, it was the book I so for that scientific illustration class, my professor asked us to pick a focus for the semester and I just thought, yeah, birds are birds are pretty cool. And I got that book. And once I started painting them, I kind of I’m not someone who grew up birdwatching. I came to birds through art, and once I started painting them, I thought, okay, hang on a minute.

Birds are very cool and they’re everywhere. Like, how have I not been keyed into birds before now? So art really helped me, fall in love with birds, which I am eternally thankful for. So sometimes just pulling on a thread really opens up a door that you might not have known would be there. You know?

I’m mixing kind of a darker gray. Ooh. Another thing. So I see that a lot of y’all are curious about gouache, just generally. So the one sort of tricky thing that I’d like to say about gouache is that. Light colors dry, darker and dark colors dry. Lighter. So would you think you’ve mixed this like beautiful perfect highlight on your palette.

And then you paint it. It hits the paper and as it dries, it will darken. And the darkest dark that you think you’ve mixed, it hits the paper and it will dry lighter. So there is a bit of a learning curve there, but it truly is, to me, a very versatile and approachable medium that I would recommend to anyone who likes to paint.

Or if you just want to get into painting.

Okay, let that dry back there.

Oh, amazing. I was thinking, how am I doing on time? And pretty good. I think we’re going to I think we’re going to paint this Queenfisher in an hour, which is, if you are familiar with my work record time.

Katherine: So some of the folks in the. Oh, yeah. Sorry.

Liz: Now I’m just going to switch brushes. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want anybody to be too surprised. I’m going to switch to just sort of a little, a little round brush to do a little bit of, beak painting. So now go ahead.

Katherine: Well, some of the folks in the Pre-Submitted questions had some curiosity about how you manage that little voice in the back of your head that some of us have that says, oh, it’s not good enough, or, oh, I should just stop or oh, it’s not right. Like, how do you get past that?

Liz: That is really tough. I will say it does take a pretty thick skin to be a scientific illustrator, because when you are working with ornithologists, they know their bird species better than anyone. So you are constantly learning and constantly being humbled in a positive way. And so that just sort of is the nature of the game. And now for my personal art.

I think that putting your art out there, which is scary and intimidating, and I and I fully understand that, but you will never know what it means to someone else if you don’t put it out there first. Right? So I think for me, seeing people smile at my art or be inspired by what I do is a huge, huge, huge motivator for me.

And I, you would never know what your art means to someone if you didn’t put it out into the world. So I would say it’s scary, but be brave because your art could really change someone’s life and you would never have the opportunity to. If you don’t put it out there and keep creating it. And sorry, I’m on my my art soapbox now and, you know, no one, you are uniquely you, right?

Nobody else is seeing the world through the lens that is you. So your perspective is unique and it’s valid and it cannot be recreated by someone else. So I would just say, know your value and keep creating. Yeah, yeah.

Painting this very fussy little part of the beak that’s peeking out behind our little gingerbread cookie fish here. And I’m. I paint birbs, not I paint fishes. So maybe y’all can help me figure out what what fish this might be. What gingerbread fish. It could be. Maybe a minnow. I don’t know.

Katherine: Kind of looked like a sardine to me.

Liz: Sardine? Okay. Thank you. Yes. See, this is the kind of feedback that I need.

Katherine: So when you swapped brushes,

Liz: yes.

Katherine: Question came up. How do you. What are some advice for taking care of brushes?

Liz: Oh my gosh. Be better at it than me. First. First piece of advice. Okay. So something really important that folks might not know because I didn’t know for a very long time. Right. Is that it is important for you once you have rinsed your brush, do not sit it upright like this to dry, because then the water will seep down into the end of the bristles and start to expand it, and it will lose its shape.

So once you rinse your brushes, either put them bristles face down or laying on their side and let them fully, fully dry before you set them upright. I, I really should take better care of my brushes, but what I end up doing is getting distracted and inevitably letting them dry in a bad way. And, then I just kind of get to know the quirks of my brushes, all the hairs poking out at odd angles, and I just use them anyway, knowing that they are going to be a little bit, a little bit kooky.

But yes, that’s my that’s my main tip. Make sure they don’t dry with the bristles pointing towards the sky.

Just pop in and a little highlight on the beak here.

And they actually their beaks are kind of a lighter color towards the towards the back of the beak. So we’re just laying that in same on the bottom.

Great.

We’re going to borrow some of that gray from our tail feathers and fill in a little bit of area on the beak.

Nice.

Katherine: I looked at the questions for a second and looked back. And there’s a whole bird here.

Liz: Yes, it’s how it’s coming together. I’m excited.

Katherine: One of the most common questions that folks asked was, what is your favorite bird?

Liz: My favorite bird. So for many years, I sort of refused to answer this question. I was like, I love all birds. Don’t make me pick a favorite. I love all my bird children equally, but I’ve sort of just given up. And I really love nuthatches. So that’s why that’s my answer is I just, I just love I just love a dang nuthatch.

Katherine: I mean, they’re cute.

Liz: They’re so cute and they’re always just looking at all the odd angles and it’s just so fun to watch them do their thing.

I want to say to this bird, appears to be coming together very, very quickly, which it is. And, my birds usually do not quite come together this fast. And I have been painting birds professionally for ten years now. So, anything, anything that you want to do, it just takes the time and practice to do it right.

Like, if you want to be a professional bird painter, all you got to do is put in the hours. Art is not a gift. It’s a skill that you build. So if anyone is interested in becoming an artist, you just got to put in the hours. That’s it.

Okay. Ooh. Fussy little details. And also, I know we’ve gotten a lot of questions about supplies and things I. You can use, like a very big brush with a tiny tip to do the smallest details right. You don’t have to use a brush with two hairs for tiny details. You just have to have a brush that comes to a nice fine point.

All right. We’re looking pretty good here.

Let’s get that white shoulder in there while I’m thinking about it, I keep ignoring the shoulder. We need to. We need to take care of that.

Lovely. Ooh. And while we’ve got some white on our brush, their tails have these really nice little kind of horizontal pattern on them. So we’re just going to. I’m not using the bright white to do these patterns because our tail is kind of in the shadow. So I’m using our same shadow that we used for the white area.

Okay. Let that dry.

Katherine: We’ve gotten a couple of questions about… how do you do your artwork in a way that protects your your hands? How do you avoid carpal tunnel?

Liz: Oh. I honestly feel I, you know, I wish I had a better answer for this question. I do art a lot, and I feel like I have sort of built up my tolerance for long painting hours over the years, but I think one of the best pieces of advice that I’ve received before is, first of all, stretch.

Please stretch and like, give your hands a break and make sure that you look at something that’s way further away than right in front of your face. To give your eyes a break, I used to hold my brush with an iron grip and my pencil to. I used to just sort of draw hard because I felt more controlled that way.

But I have since kind of loosened up my grip on both my brush and my pencil. And I feel like that that is actually what’s really going to sort of save my hand in the long run is being a bit softer with the way that I hold my brush, which is kind of hard to relearn if it’s something you’ve been doing for a while.

Yeah.

Let’s see. I’m just kind of popping in some darker shadows. Oh, another thing that I probably should have warned y’all about is that I do. In fact, I like to leave the eye for very last. And that is sort of alarming to a lot of people, but, trust me that she’ll get her eye. It’ll just it’ll be kind of the the final.

The final piece of the painting.

Katherine: So any reason behind why you leave it for last?

Liz: Yeah. And interestingly, any of you who have visited the lab and seen the incredible mural by Jane Kim. So we’ve talked about our artistic process together, and she goes in first with the eyes and I go in last. But it’s for the same reason, which is that, I feel like it really brings the bird to life.

So she wants to make sure, like, I’m getting it right first go. And I’m like, I’m doing everything around it, and then it’s the cherry on top to finish the painting. So, same reasoning, different strategy, but, yeah, it’s just sort of. It helps me. It helps me finish a painting because, if you’re an artist, you’ll know that sometimes it’s kind of hard to know when a painting is done, so,

Yeah, that’s something that helps with that as well as kind of having a this is my end piece to the painting is eyeball. And then that’s it.

Katherine: So that question earlier about how do you know when a painting is finished.

Liz: Yes. You just have to decide. And that’s hard because we all want to just fuss and fuss and fuss with our art and, keep working. And it’s never quite done in our eyes. And I really do. I really do get that. But you just have to say this is enough. You know, maybe think about if your friend showed you the painting and said, what do you think?

Is this done? If you’d say, yeah, of course, then your painting is done.

Okay. I think what do we have like less than ten minutes. Okay. So we’re going to do—eight minutes. We’re going to speedrun a gingerbread fish. And feel free if there’s any questions that have come up I’m happy to, answer questions while I work on a gingerbread color.

Katherine: Well, could you give folks some advice for shading?

Liz: For shading specifically? Let’s see. I would say it’s really easy to let your shade colors get a bit muddy. We talked a bit earlier about adding black and things like that. And while I don’t think that adding black is a bad idea, definitely experiment with adding maybe like an ultramarine blue or a purple for your shadows and see how that feels, because sometimes you just need to experiment a bit, I think.

Okay, y’all have to tell me, is that a pretty a pretty decent gingerbread color? I hope it might be a little more on the toasted side, but I think we’ll put some some gingerbread icing, a little icing on it, and make it look very cute. But yeah. Also, when you’re mixing colors on your palette, you can always add more of a color, but you cannot subtract.

So just sort of be a bit slow and methodical. I’m going to turn my painting here, but slow and methodical. When you are mixing a color and take your time, you know, don’t, don’t rush through it and give yourself the opportunity to, you know, make the color that you want to see. Yeah.

Katherine: So why do you start with a tracing paper?

Liz: Great question. So the tracing paper. So I don’t want to be erasing and re sketching and adjusting on my final paper. Right. I want to save my sketchbook paper or whatever paper I’m using for the final painting when I’ve got everything sort of worked out and planned out and things like that. So that’s why I work all my I work all the kinks out on tracing paper, and then I bring it to the final paper and I don’t have to do any adjusting.

I can just go straight to painting, which is really, well, it’s ideal, because you don’t want to be, like, erasing a ton on your final paper because then, like, erasing is hard on paper, so you could kind of chew the paper up and, we don’t we don’t wish for that. So. Okay, I’m switching brushes one last time, and we’re going to we’re going to just do some really loose like branch sort of color down here and a little bit.

Yeah. Go ahead.

Katherine: One thing into our last five minutes here.

Liz: Yeah.

Katherine: I just want to remind the chat that, if they missed a little bit at the beginning and they want to make sure that they can get a hold of the recording, there’s a pinned link in the chat. You can visit that, page and register, and we’ll be sending you an email with the recording link.

Liz: Lovely. I am going to just do this kind of, like, almost like dry brushing. If you all are familiar with watercolor, like, my brush is not so saturated with paint that I’m, like, filling in every single area. I just kind of want to imply that, yes, this Queenfisher is not floating in the air. She is, in fact perched on something.

So let’s give her let’s give her a perch as we’re winding down, and then we will work on her eyes, and then that’ll be that. This has gone by lightning quick. I’m honestly a little bit. I’m a little bit sad. I don’t know how it went by so quick.

Katherine: I know, and it’s so shocking how beautifully you painted. In just an hour there’s a whole Queenfisher.

Liz: Thank you. She, She came together quickly, and she’s, she’s a near and dear subject to me, so that helps, too. You know, like, if there’s a bird that you’ve painted many, many times before, it’s going to be easier to paint them again and again. So, I, I know her well, I guess is what I’m saying.

All right. Doing the brush switcheroo. I’m. And let’s do a little let’s do a bit of icing on our. What did we decide? A sardine is our fish. Maybe a little sardine icing cookie?

Katherine: No. Cookie. Sardine?

Liz: Yes. Gingerbread. Sardine.

Cute. I guess they should have a little mouth right? No. They look. They look happy to be a snack.

Okay, let’s do the eye. Here we go. Like I said, save it till the bitter end. Of course. Which, I know is a bit, a bit strange, but I will make sure that we give her an eye and it’ll have a really, really nice highlight in it to bring her fully to life.

All right, so we’ve got the black in, and then. Let’s get a nice white highlight in the eye.

And that top left hand corner where our sun is coming from. And then I love to put, like, a little, just a little swoop down in the bottom there as well. And then sort of the last piece of the eye is that most birds have an eye ring. So it’s sort of a little, a little fleshy ring around their eye.

That kind of helps make the eye pop.

Katherine: Beautiful. We are at the last minute. Listen,

Liz: We did it. We did it.

Katherine: That looks gorgeous.

Liz: Really close. One down to the wire.

Katherine: Ready for us to to sing us on out.

Liz: Yeah, sure. Right.

Katherine: Well, Liz, thank you so much. It’s so wonderful to have you today.

Liz: It has been delightful. Thank you.

Katherine: I learned a lot getting to talk to you today. And, so we just got a few small announcements for folks as we filter, filter on out here. Thank you, audience, for having so many wonderful questions. And thanks again, Liz, for letting us visit.

Liz: Yes, thank you for listening. Me. Well, we’re happy to.

Katherine: Where should folks go if they’d like to keep up with you?

Liz: Yeah. Y’all can find me, pretty much everywhere on the internet as IPaintBirbs. That’s b-i-r-b-s. And I’m on all the social medias, and I live stream on Twitch, and I would be happy to see you anytime, anywhere. Come say hi.

Katherine: So head on over and see Liz. If you’ve registered today, you’ll receive an email with a recording hopefully by the end of next week. As we get the recording all nice and pretty for you. Our moderators are currently adding helpful links for you in the chat, including where you can find lists. So if you’re interested in learning more from Liz, we hope you’ll consider joining us for that upcoming workshop we mentioned briefly earlier.

So we’re so excited. We’re going to be bringing Liz back in January. Liz, do you want to talk a little bit about what you’ll be teaching in January?

Liz: Yeah, I will be doing a workshop with Cornell and all of you who were interested in sort of the beginning process that I didn’t get to cover today. Drawing birds. So the workshop will be sort of an intro to bird anatomy for artists and how to get started drawing birds and seeing birds like an artist. It is intended to be very accessible for beginners, but I feel like seasoned artists might get something out of it too.

So if you’re interested in doing more bird art, I would love to see you in January.

Katherine: Great! We’re so looking forward to it. But you guys might also want to check out Liz’s self-paced online nature journaling and field sketching course. It’s currently on sale, but you can save an additional 20% if you use the coupon code Liz Studio 25 at checkout before January 1st. We hope you’ll join us for future live events. Keep an eye out for upcoming items and review recorded programs on our webinar page.

We hope you guys have a great day! Happy birding everyone! Thanks again Liz.

Liz: Thank you so much. It was great. Y’all take care. Have a good day.

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