When painting on black paper the first few things you paint seem to be super bight as there is no other references. It’s not until more of the back paper is covered that things start to settle down a little and loose their focus.

Often when a painting is almost complete I will revisit the first few things I painted on the paper just to check if the values are still correct. Usually I find that they are a little too dark and need to be brightened up a little.

I found a much quicker way to paint feathers using the side of a chisel brushing with wet neutral grey gouache. As you can see on the back of the swan I started to use white to highlight the edges.

On the neck I used the same technique but to finish the feather off I used a fine brush with long white strokes.

The rest of the back feathers were painted with a fine brush using little strokes of neutral grey, then another layer of white.

As like the other swan this had a few brown tail feathers and other than the red bill, thats the only colours used in this painting.

Last step is to paint a few little ripples then add some reflections followed by a few bits of dust and stuff on the surface of the water.

I guess this painting was quicker than most but there is also hundreds of previous hours painting experience and you grow with each painting and find faster ways to achieve the same result.

Some artworks flow and others don’t, you can spend hours trying to get one small part of a painting correct, like the nose and hands of a wallaby I must have re worked them about 5 times, each.

Anyway thats a future paint and another story to be told later in the week.

Finished artwork professionally framed in none reflective glass and now the final piece in the swan family.