A New Shelduck

I have a new batch of books arriving today, and my next consignment from MOO should be here this week too. I wanted to do a new Shelduck illustration as they appear in a number of titles, and they are one of my favourite ducks. I painted this one on white paper as I don’t seem to have any blue paper left, and I have to standardise them in Photoshop anyway, and if I paint on blue I end up using masses of white gouache! Although I have an Artists Open Houses coming up this weekend, I find it much harder to paint the birds as stand-alone artworks rather than simply illustrations for the birdwatching logbooks. Of course there’s no reason why an illustration won’t work as wall art but I am much more focussed on what’s going to work for detail and identification in the books these days.

WordPress has interpreted the colours rather bizarrely on the blue copy and I can’t seem to adjust them! Suffice to say the actual version is a little less psychedelic …

This image will probably end up in the next Birds of Rye Harbour, or possibly Coast & Clifftop Birds.

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In other news, I have been working on a gouache painting in my Fabriano sketchbook which is nicely time-consuming, and I am adding detail in Blackwing Pearl pencil, which is lovely as it’s such nice paper to draw on. I have become much more patient about tackling larger or more involved drawings and paintings which I feel is a useful skill to (finally!) settle in to.

I have also been in touch with an organisation over in the States regarding a logbook for their rewilding project so I am excited to see where that leads. Orders for the logbooks here have been ticking along thanks to the Country Living article, and I have had a lot more orders through Gardners. Sadly my independent stockists have either not replied to my calls or emails, or have said they have enough stock so who knows?