Black-throated Green Warbler...A Painting from Tom's Photo

I have been doing a lot of pencil drawings lately...our grandson, John...

from this photo...

and our granddaughter, Samantha...

from this photo...

The sketch of John turned out looking the age he was when the photo was taken but the sketch of Samantha came out looking older than she is in the photo.  The proportions of faces change as we age.  In this case, her eyes should have been drawn lower on her face. Changing the position of her eyes would then affect the positioning of all her other facial features. I decided it would be best to leave this drawing as it is. It will remind me to measure more carefully next time. 

The trick is to think in terms of comparative relationships.

I painted the Black-throated Green Warbler from a photo Tom took at Magee Marsh on May 15.

I did not draw the bird before I painted it.  Instead, I measured with my eyes as I painted it, noting the proportion of the width of the green back to the width of the wing to the width of the breast.  Length proportions are measured against one another in the same way. The following progression from the second session to the final are below.

At this point I sent a copy of the painting to an artist friend who often critiques my work for me.  She reminded me that the eye needed a spot of life.  A dot of white carefully placed adds life.  She also suggested that I define the leaves a bit more.  I didn't want them to become as important as the bird but they should be more important than what I had them at this point.

Here I have made the leaves more important but I still wasn't satisfied with them.

This is the original photo again.  I didn't like the arrangement of the leaves so I am using my imagination, my "artistic license" and that takes a bit of thinking.

This is the final painting.  I played around with the faint hint of leaves in the upper left portion.  I also made some tiny touch up on the foreground leaves.