Snowy chickadee on pines. Study of snowy scene and abstract pines painting

Hello my friends, thank you for coming to visit me and my chickadee friend. Don;t forget if the video quality is low, you can change it on youtube, just click on that gear thingie and you can get whatever resolution you need. And be sure to pause when you are tired, not necessary to push on, just come back the next day and keep going. It is meant to be fun fun. We are now in January 2022, 2021 went by quite fast. I have to say that I worked hard though, not as hard as I should but I try to be productive and happy doing so. I hope 2022 will be even better and get a lot more things done. I have a goal to post at least every other week with a video. I will work hard to make that happen. I hope you guys come visit here often and hopefully you will pick up a paint brush, some watercolor and good paper and get started. We went to Texas to see my oldest daughter’s family. As soon as I stepped in I think I caught their RSV. It was almost 3 days after I felt the symptoms. My daughter encouraged me to eat Zicam like candies and I did, and maybe that kept the fever from coming. We tested the kids and knew it was not Covid, the poor grandchildren had a hard time sleeping with all the coughing. As for me, it was until I get home that the real coughing started. I was comfortable enough on the plane ride home, only cough once or twice. I was very surprised how healthy everyone was on the plane. It has been a while since we travel by plane because of Covid and was very nice to visit with family. The grandchildren were adorable, friendly, am I kidding, they were more than friendly. As soon as the littlest one woke up she headed right for my bed, and I soaked up the attentions. What can I say, I am so glad they are so easy to please. I am a big kid myself, singing loudly to waba waba was absolutely fun for me and them. We sang so much my second grandson Will went around and told people, ‘this kind of situation does not call for freaking out!! ” Was that awesome or what??? Can you tell I have a good time. I don’t really have a problem with no snow for Christmas, we have so much snow here in Utah, I was delighted being able to go out having fun we even got a hike in.

Even if Christmas is over, winter is still hanging around. For some of the artist, when the flowers bloom, we often get inspired. So during these cold month when I don’t have any flowers hanging around, I think we should dive into birds. After a major snow storm in Utah, when the sun comes out again, the chickadee will be out bouncing from tree to tree. It is usually quite a beautiful scene and I am always grateful for the wonderful beautiful world that our Father in Heaven gave us. Chickadees are black and white with a bit of yellow, but because of their movement you can spot them easy. The loved it if we leave bird seeds for them. I am actually quite a fancy bird feeding person. My favorite way of feeding chickadees are using an old pine cone, rolled in peanut butter and packed in as many seeds as the pine cone will hold and hang it on a tree. We have a lot of competitive big birds like magpies, blue birds and hawks even. But what discouraged us was the presence of squirrels. I seriously don’t mind feeding them too, as they are little animals, but they always always find a spot in our foundation and dug a big hole, and then have lots of children. That concerns us a lot and I have to stop putting out my lovely fatty pine cones. I don’t know, we have some very vicious cats moved into our neighborhood, and since then I have not seen a squirrel around, maybe it’s time to try my calories loaded pine cone recipe again, how fun is that, I truly missed that. Long time ago when I didn’t know how to do snowy scene, I would look and look at what other watercolorists did. I know a lot of them went to acrylic or gouache to just put the white one the branches. But I studied and do more research and of course put on the thinking cap, I am quite happy with what I have today. In the video I talked about how I don’t use misket much, because I have, through the years , learned how to avoid and reserve white area. I am not even sure if I have misket or if they are all dried out. I am quite proficient with the detailed small brushes though as you all can see, I probably use them too much. So if you can try, you can follow me on this painting with no misket used, more spontaneously than rigid style of reserving whites. We have done a few darker atmosphere background lately, I hope we have fun and is learning a lot how to paint night, snow and dark. As always, anything you wish me to clarify or any suggestions, please feel free to contact me, I love hearing from you.

Paper and brushes are the same, arches watercolor paper about 7 by 7, Chinese happy dot brush, bigger brush is a cheap Amazon mop brush. We mainly use Payne’s gray, lamps black, Indigo, some green, darker green maybe, yellow ochre and burn umber. And at the very end I put some ultramarine blue to liven up the snow a bit.

Ok thanks a whole bunch, I really enjoy your comments, and am very grateful for your visit. Your kindness really is motivating to me. I have so much fun and hope you do too. I hope this coming year you can try some of the paintings and able to improve and enjoy the learning journey. love you guys, keep your brushes wet.

Kathy

Oh I will come back in a bit and put a drawing of the chickadee for you guys to trace if you need to.