Painting this Blue Jay was a real joy. Blue jays are tough to paint. You'd think maybe they are easy with thier bold colors but honestly, that bright color makes the texture and shadow a little tougher to capture. The ACTUAL color of a Blue Jay is brown however, the way way light moves through their feathers makes them appear blue. Really? Really: https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Blue_Jay/overview I also learned that the oldest recorded Blue Jay was 26 years old! Twenty six!
In this piece I also choose to add a background which is really not something I do very often and I really like how it turned out. I used plastic wrap to get the bark texture (which worked beautifully). If you're interests, you can check out the technique on YouTube. Just search "plastic wrap watercolor painting". So below are just a few progressions of the painting if you're interested and want to check it out.
