Painting the simple Junco
Here in this part of Virginia we have a lot of little gray birds that flock around our feeders. Called juncos, they are fearless tiny birds slightly bigger than chickadees. In Variations of gray mostly slate gray on the top and a buff color on their bellies they will persevere against squirrels, jays and the most fearsome of weather conditions.
When I was painting the winter birds for the 2014 ACEO’s of Christmas I was trying to figure out how to make a gray bird in a mostly gray winter world pop and standout. After painting several cardinals I thought why not place a junco in a holly bush and let the berries be the counterpoint to all the dark colors.
Well it worked, I think, very well. Here we have the little junco in the holly bush. Then I got a surprise. When I looked at the enlarged version of the miniature painting I suddenly realized that not only did it work but when you looked at the brush strokes at first they seemed as if they were very stylized but then there was a sense that there was a snow storm with a slight breeze as the little bird balanced on the branch waiting its turn at the feeder.
The leaves seemed to have that blurred movement to them that one got when the sutter speed on the camera doesn’t quite keep up with the movement. It was movement I didn’t expect to capture in this small work of art.
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