First Attempt at Scissor-tailed Flycatcher Painting

Scissor-tailed Flycatcher at Bartram's Garden. Watercolor by Ken Januski

I don't normally work this realistically but sometimes when seeing a bird for the first time I tend more in that direction. I guess it's just an attempt to understand the bird.

I spent a lot of time looking at this wayward Scissor-tailed Flycatcher yesterday so have a mental image of it. At the same time I took many photos and this is based on one of them. It's a 9x12 inch watercolor on Arches 140# hot press paper. I used the hot press because it has a smooth surface and allows me to be a bit more finicky in getting a good pencil outline for the bird.

Eventually I'll prefer a rougher cold press paper but I wanted to be able to spend time trying to get the shape right here. Somewhere along the line I think a print will make an appearance.

I do love watercolor but it's still not my strongest suit. Today is the third anniversary of the opening of my Etsy store. Hard to believe. Since I already had another store when I opened it I planned to just use it for prints, which I was trying for the first time in many years. But gradually I closed the other store and moved everything to Etsy.

In searching through the annual statistics for the store I see that all of the top ten or more most viewed items are linocuts or woodcuts. I do think that they have more individuality. Still I know that there are some people who much prefer the watercolors. And occasionally I do as well. So I keep working at them. They are just something quite different than the prints.