Paul Beattie Fine Art

This painting is being done from a photograph on Skomer Island. Very kindly provided by Paul Dale. Thanks again Paul.

I drew out three basic shapes of the puffin's outline on Winsor & Newton double primed stretched canvas with Yellow Ochre, 45.7 X 35.6 cm.

Once I had decided on the size to paint this beautiful bird on it's support I used a mixture of Ultramarine Blue and Cerulean Blue for the darkest areas ( the odd touch of white was added ) and Cerulean Blue mixed with Titanium White for the lighter areas.

I have blended the colours together while the paint was still wet with soft horizontal strokes. 

The Puffin has been drawn out with its outlines and I have started to block in the basic undercoat to get ready for the next stages. If you look closely you can see the beak outline in pencil.

Burnt Umber was used for the dark plumage base colour with a touch of Titanium white. A mixture of Paynes grey and Cerulean Blue was used for the light plumage base. Both mixtures were very watery in consistency almost to a watercolour consistency.

The work done today is to build up the shape of the puffin, basic form and basic feather directions.

Colours used are, a combination of mainly Burnt Umber and Paynes Gray for the darker feathers (blocking in the base colour).

Titanium white with Paynes Gray was used for the lighter feather base. Yellow Ochre was used for the beak background wash as a watercolour consistency.

I also added more blue's to the back ground and blended them together. These are the same mixes used in the previous steps.

Using the same colour combinations as previously used I have managed to get an hour to work on the feathers and define the outline of the Puffin further. This should not take too long to finish it is just getting the time to do it, please bear with me as I want to finish this week.

The beak has been built up with the following colours :- Red Oxide, Cadmium red Lt, Cadmium Orange Hue for the bright colours. These are the base for my beak. I have also used Buff Titanium mixed with Titanium white and a touch of Yellow Ochre for the other areas of beige colour. This colour was added to Paynes Gray for the darker areas.

Starting with some feather detail today on the head of the puffin I used Titanium White with Burnt Umber and also Paynes Gray. I have redefined the cheek, eye outline and the lower beak. I still need to add a deeper red to the beak and some more details.

This painting is now going to be final details for the next few stages which are slower to paint due to the size 0 brush that I will be using for fine feather details.