Porch Parrot Head Study

Day 201: As I said to a friend just a few minutes ago, "Ego is a thing." I'm pretty proud of this one, but then, Porch Parrots (Evening Grosbeaks) are some of my favourite people. I did the sketch a few days ago using coloured pencil. I wasn't exactly happy with the way the pencil laid down on the lightly textured paper and was bemoaning the fact that I didn't own a blending stump (tortillon). I could have made one, I suppose, but I didn't want to risk messing up my work with a homemade stump. Then, in the process of looking for something else entirely in my arts cupboard, I found one. I think I'd put it away without any idea of how it was used. I did a test patch on scrap paper, liked the effect, and then took the leap to apply it to my Parrot. It substantially reduced the obvious accumulation of pencil on the "peaks" of the paper and also helped shade the colours. In playing around, I learned that a more rapid stroke warms the wax in the pencil and blends more smoothly, but a slower stroke allows for blending without entirely destroying fine lines. I still haven't settled on a medium for bird portraits, but I am leaning rather heavily toward coloured pencils, perhaps with a wash created with watercolour pencils (a different breed of cat) as an underlay or even as a glaze.