From a fun paint along with the delightful Berskshire, England artist, Liz Chadderton, on Shopkeeparty.com. She’s always a lot of fun and brimming with ideas, tricks, and tips. Plus she loves to paint any and all animals. I wish I had her energy! We started by drawing eggs off center in the sweet spot. 1/3 up and 1/3 from edge. Used a piece of rough arches. Next we applied masking fluid to our eggs.. Then we drew the nests and applied more masking fluid. I used a bamboo stick. Masking will ruin your good brushes so NEVER use it on them. Then we applied a light layer of watercolor using our chosen colors. Liz said to only use 6 colors. You never needed more than that.
Mine were indigo, Thalo blue, Prussian blue, burnt umber, Payne’s grey, and moonglow. I finally added raw sienna. I needed a lighter earth tone. Then we dried it added more masking fluid for more sticks and added a middle tone layer. As usual I went a little dark.
Hair dried a lot of masking fluid today. Something ideally you should never do as it makes it tough to remove.
More masking fluid added and dried then the darkest color. I tried using Q-Tips to put the masking fluid on. DONT. Yuck.
Lots of blobs of masking were what the teacher ordered. They take a while to dry. Then we rubbed and rubbed and rubbed off all that masking. Now it’s too white. So we used a rigger, in my case a Cheap Joes Scroogys Loose Goose brush. Don’t you love the name? It’s really a slim dagger brush. Makes the best curls and swirls. And terrific curly hair. Last we added more color to knock out some of the whites. Mine were a little over powering. I also used my loose Goose to sling lines aka brushes on it.
I also dipped my Loose Goose into some Winsor Newton white gouache to add a few more pieces of straw and curly bits where I didn’t have any. Bet you can’t tell where I did that.
This class is available for purchase on Shopkeeparty soon if you would like to try your hand at a nest or one of Lizs other classes. All are available as video on Shopkeeparty.com.
Margaret McCarthy Hunt Art 