Eagle in watercolor

After a whole lot of pencil and wash work, it was time to plunge into color for this bird.  This was not the easiest subject because eagles tend to look so mad all the time; they're not your cute little bluebird or cardinal pictures.  But who can resist their beautiful, majestic, full white heads of glorious feathers?

©Christy Lemp Momma Eagle watercolor 7" x 10"

Eagles

I'm addicted to checking in on the Decorah eagles!  This is a live stream webcam of a pair of eagles in their nest that are now diligently taking care of three eggs.  It's a facinating live study of these magnificent, caring, watchful birds.  I need to donate a piece to an upcoming Audubon fundraiser and thought they might make a good subject.

 Spent the better part of two afternoons sketching the eagles.  They kept moving of course, so I had multiple sketches going at once to try and catch their poses.

Finished (I hope!) wash pencil drawings on watercolor paper.  Maybe eggs and hatchlings to follow.  If you want to watch them just google Decorah eagles.  Enjoy!

Iris Time

It was time to bring some flowers indoors, so I stopped by our village florist and picked out a few beautiful irises to paint with.

 I'm calling this wash #89 since I'm still plugging away at my 100 washes.
cad yellow, aureolin, new gamboge, Quin gold, FUB, winsor violet on Arches 140#. I'm stubbornly not using pencil lines and just outlining a  basic sketch with tinted water to keep it loose.

 Same colors, but on Fabriano 300# hot press.  It's very forgiving paper- I happily reworked a lot of areas and didn't have to worry about mistakes. I could already see this color scheme seemed a bit boring and needed livening up, so..........

....added perylene maroon to brighten things up a bit.  The composition could be better but maybe more cropping will help this one.