BBC Wildlife Artist Competition

I have successfully completed five pieces, that have been submitted to the Beeb's competition. And, for once, I am actually very pleased with the results.

To say I'm perfectly calm and collected about awaiting the judging results for both this one and the DSWF competition, would be...a complete lie! I am ridiculously nervous and twitchy about the whole thing and am just trying to keep myself occupied with...well, anything to do.

Roll on April, so I can find out whether I can stop being twitchy...

Buzzard Montage - DSWF WAY09 Entry

As mentioned in my earlier post, this is my entry to the DSWF - WAY09 competition.

In this post, I'm going to show close-up images of each section of the piece and include the photographs I worked from.
The photographs were taken by myself with my Canon EOS 400D SLR camera. All are of captive birds taken during falconry displays, so they were quite content to pose for the camera ;)


Here we have the image of the buzzard in flight, along with the cropped photo worked from.
This particular image was painted using 'Reeves - Watercolours'.




Next up with have a sepia pencil sketch portrait.
As you can see the photo was of the entire bird but I decided to us a sketching effect and focus all the detail on the head.




The third and final of the smaller sections of the piece, brings us to a full graphite rendering of a buzzard about to land.
Pencils used for this were a combination of H's (3H, 2H & H) of WHSmith brand, and B's (2B, 3B & 4B) of Derwent Artists'.
The photo; like the flying one above; was taking with high speed shutter and rapid shutter settings on the camera. Making certain that out of a series of ten images, just the one would have the right pose to use.



Finally, here are two close-up sections of the main picture.
The first is a detail of the wings/feathers. This was achieved with the use of a watercolour wash and the the detail added over the top, using 'Derwent Artists' Coloured Pencils'.

The Second is a close-up of the head. Like the wings, the feathers on the head were coloured pencils over the top of watercolour. However, to achieve the 'punch-out' of the eye and beak as centre-points of the whole piece, I turned to 'Daler Rowney System 3' Acrylic paints.

The photograph owes a great deal of thanks to the man 'flying' the buzzard that day - for he decided to said the bird over to a perch in perfect line of my camera and without any people in the way. And thanks to that, the background was only the mottled green of the foliage around.

A new year...

I have made a decision! And that decision is...to pursue my art and photography more this year.


I've already made a start on this. Firstly, by entering the DSWF - Wildlife Artist of the Year 2009 - The finished entry; a montage of buzzards; can be seen in the picture to the right (I will be posting a separate entry with close-up details of each section of the piece.)


My next step, will be to work on several pieces for the BBC Wildlife Artist of the Year 2009 Thus far, I have one A2 size montage of Tigers ready to send in (as this was completely sometime in 2008) and will be doing a further four pieces during the following week/s.

I'm hoping, at some point (possibly March), to start work on constructing a website. More news to follow about this later on.

Hello...

Hey there. Welcome to my Art blog. I've been drawing and painting for as long as I can remember - mainly in my chosen subject, Wildlife.

I hold an A Level in Fine Art and an AS level in Photography. After my studies I spent almost a year in a temporary position of Art & Photography Technician at my school.

I started painting and selling plaques through Ebay about 4 years ago. Starting with Kids' room plaques, featuring subjects such as Cartoon characters, Football/Soccer, Animals and Flowers; before branching out into Front door and other room plaques. It was only on a whim that I tried to do a stable plaque and since that decision many horse/pony owners have purchased one.