This painting of a Little Grebe is a great example of when everything comes together to create a strong image.
It starts with a great subject. Obviously this contains water and, I must confess, painting water is a challenge for me. However the stillness of the water and wonderful colour in the original image (a photograph I took at Holkham Pines in North Norfolk) meant that I could see a quite graphic image to be painted. I do occasionally start a painting without a clear idea of where it will end up and that can be an uncomfortable journey. Another thing I like about the subject is that Little Grebes are very identifiable by their silhouette - you don't need all the feather detail to know what you are looking at.
I then needed a clear plan on how I was going to paint it and that wasn't difficult either. Normally I try and flesh out the painting with a quick sketch and then fill in the key parts so that I know where everything is. In this case the only thing that needs to be 'accurate' is the Little Grebe. It needs to be identifiable.
You can see from this stage painting take after about two hours that its pretty much there even at this early stage. I don't usually take the subject to a finished level early - often its the last thing I paint but it just didn't make sense in this painting. The water had to flow around the bird naturally and it had to sit in the water right.
With a good subject and a clear plan all I had to do was paint it! The hardest part of this painting in my mind is to make the water 'real' and preserving the wonderful light. Looking at the reference photograph the water broke down into some really simple shapes - nowhere near the challenge of breaking waves or a waterfall. If you look at the detail there are some really simple shapes but somehow it is pretty indestructible - it just carries on reading as glassy water. It's something about the stillness of it, the eyecatching bow wave of the grebe or the simple colour palette that makes it work. I did experiemtn with painting a bit more detail on the grebe but somehow it didn't work as well as the silhouette and the strong reflection. I did add just a hint of the rust colour on the back of the head.
Even the final stages were easy. Of course I had to stop myself faffing with it too much but the focus was always on tidying up and sharpening the grebe image and the water it is moving around it.
I loved painting this - I seldom have as clear a view of what I am trying to achieve and such clear guiderails to stop me going off track. I'm now going through my back catalogue of photographs to see if I have any other similar images to paint
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