Red Kite
The river, bridged by
A road and a red kite, marks
The confluence point
Wood Pigeon
Gathering twigs, you
Build a willow tree house in
View from my window
Seagulls
Three seagulls scull by
One calling ‘Stroke!’ as they fly
A blue summer sky
Swallows
Swallows turn sharply
Sizing up the summer fields
Wing spans set square now
Swifts
Above the house, there!
The needle song of swift flight
Threading through the sky
This little postcard-sized watercolour I’ve painted, ‘Tree Bathing’ will be on exhibtion and sale for this year’s PAE art for a cause in The Hague, Netherlands. To find out more click here.
I’ve deliberatley used strong tree shadows to give a sense of bright light pouring through the pine trees.
I’ve also recently been working on some watercolour commissions. This one, featuring balloons over the Bristol Suspension Bridge, also has strong reflections and shadows in the river water to give depth to the river gorge.
This little watercolour of reed beds and an Egret, (for sale in my Etsy shop here) doesn’t rely on strong shadows or reflections but does use a graduated colour on the reeds, from light to dark, to suggest denseness and depth at the water line and the water is the same blue tone as the sky.
So my top tips for working with watercolours to create shadows and reflections are:
Work our your main light source direction for your image and keep all your shadows going in the same direction away from it.
If you have a secondary light source from a different direction, do the same for that but make your shadows are lighter and check whether they are cooler or warmer in tone than those from the main light source.
Think about graduating your colour blocks to emphasise the depth or solidity of an object.
Keep skies and water in the same tonal ranges in your painting, water reflects the sky!
Birds at Bishop’s Palace, Wells
Pen and her cygnets
Evening light on calm water
Following her home
Heron
Heron flies above
The old stone ramparts, herald
For the palace walls
Robin
Under the old yew
In the gloaming you watch me
Small red sentinel
Find my Bird haiku book for sale on Amazon here.
Breakfast with the birds
A pair of swallows
Perched on the telephone line
Call to say they’re here
Late afternoon
Willow sheds its down
Windblown to a lullaby
Sung by the goldfinch
April
Two woodpigeons couched
Atop the blackthorn eating
The spent Spring blossom
On Gardening
Little goldcrest caught
Out the corner of my eye
Both searching for Spring
The chuckling hedge
Green shoulders shaking with glee
As Blackbirds shuck jokes
Dandelion clock
Goldfinch slides along the stalk
Counting down the seeds
March Morning
In the willow tree
Under a Van Gogh sky a
Robin paints in song
Goldfinches
Five feisty finches
Fill the golden willow boughs
With red hot trouble!
Powder puffs, dusted
Gold in the golden sunlight
Catkin and goldfinch
On the Spring Equinox
Now the day rises
Green leaves unfurl to greet her
And birds sing her name
Magpie
Four magpies fighting
In the road, oblivious
To me passing by
Magpie finds long stick
Jackdaw wants it, sky scuffle!
Fight, flight, Magpie wins
Robin
In the blackthorn boughs
Robin; red lantern on branch
Among the blossom
Goldfinch
Goldfinches riff free
Jazz. Syncopated beats on
Bare willow branches
Marsh Harrier
Gold wings in late sun
Struck from Thor’s hammer, bright streak
Of talons and beak
Starling Murmuration
Front row gathering
We wait for the performance
A winter ballet
Sky whale! Sky whale! Swan!
Starlings flow shapes across sky
Nature’s movie show
Find more of my birdwatching haiku here:
This morning the starling flock flew out at dawn in minus six degrees centigrade, as they flew overhead, due to the thousands of birds passing, I was able to notice a pattern within the larger grid of the flock.
Starling DRS haiku:
(You can find more of my birdwatching haiku in print and as a eBook on Amazon here.)
October sees the return of the huge flocks of starlings to Somerset and I am very lucky to be able to watch these extraordinary little birds locally. They are an endless source of entertainment and inspiration and they definitely brighten up those grey winter days with their rowdy antics.
I’ve posted before about my bird haiku book, available here, and during the year I keep writing about the birds I spot, an ongoing project for me. For the last few weeks the starlings have been gathering on the lines in our road, reminding me of that Hitchcock movie classic ‘The Birds’, very appropriate for this week!
Wishing you a Happy Diwali, Halloween, Samhain and Allhallowstide at this turning point of the year.
Starlings
This morning’s laundry
Already flapping in breeze
Starlings on a line
In the grey rain-light
A steady drizzle of wings
Storm clouds of starlings
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