Warbler in Progress

Mourning  and Black-Throated Blue Warbler. Acrylic painting in progress. Copyright 2020 by Ken Januski

Two of my warbler paintings remain in progress. The Yellow-breasted Chat that I showed in the last post  and this new acrylic painting of a Mourning Warbler and a Black-throated Blue Warbler. The Yellow-breasted Chat remains unchanged but  I'm still not convinced that it is  done. This new one I think is nearly done  each time I  finish work on it. Then I decide I'm unhappy with it  the next day and resume painting.

Because I'm uncertain  about both of them, though generally happy with them,  it seems silly to write about them. But there is one  thing I did  notice in painting most of my new acrylic paintings, especially when compared to many of my older acrylic paintings of birds. These do not seem crabbed. They don't seem like they are fighting for room to breathe.

I used to have a very large live-in studio where my 6x8  foot paintings were dwarfed by the 12-16 foot ceilings. When we moved to our  house all of that changed. I could  barely get my paintings in the  house  and I certainly couldn't  paint any more that size. Even a 4x2 foot painting was extremely difficult  to do  because I couldn't back up  far enough to see it.

So I went to smaller sizes, 9x12 like these, and some smaller and some larger. The problem with most of them, especially as I look at them now, is that they look spatially constrained, like I didn't feel comfortable painting on such small canvases. The big surprise with my new paintings  is that I DO feel comfortable. I have no idea why. But I won't look a gift horse in the mouth.

I should add that I think one of the things I don't like about the Curlew and Great Cormorant painting that I also showed here recently is that it does look spatially confined. I'm not sure whether or not  I'll be able to fix  that.