Several years ago I read Winter Birds by Lars Jonsson. In the book he outlined many common bird species in his area of Sweden along with many wonderful watercolor pictures. In the section on the Tits, I noticed similaries between the Willow Tit and the Black-capped Chickadee. The same with the Great Spotted Woodpecker and the North American Hairy Woodpecker. It raised the possibility of pairing them. But also raised a few issues.
I’ve spent the past decade painting North American birds and haven’t really thought about European bird species. For my paintings, I’ve taken the bulk of the reference photos. It fostered a genuine connection with the bird. For those that I wasn’t lucky enough to be able to photograph, I’m a member of a networking site (pmp-art.com) dedicated to sharing photos for artistic inspiration without fear of copyright infringement. The site’s members are from across the globe.
My favorite maps (and if you’re a regular visitor you probably already know it!) are pre-1945 topographic maps. These maps were originally hand-drawn, some are stained and generally are wonderfully aged and textured by time. I wasn’t sure what maps, topographic or otherwise, were available for Europe in the public domain. I found two great sources; University of Texas Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection and University of Wisconsin Milwaukee AGSL Digital Map Collection.
With that, it was up to Photoshop to manipulate the maps to boost color/enchance texture and my own hands to draw and paint the birds! Below is the first piece for Branches – Black-capped Chickadee and Willow Tit. It’s 6 X 12 on a hardboard panel.
