Female Cardinal and Male Cardinal

New Painting Project 2013 - part 1:

The Background

Finally I am back to painting, with acrylics again.

All Winter long the light was just not right in the room I use for doing the art work. 

Now, with Spring finally here the sunny days with the right light to see the colors "as they are" is back. Electric illumination falsifies them too much for me. 

This is the image I'm working on:

Female Cardinal by Marilou Aballe

Contrary to the usual "bird-on-twig = background is sky blue" setting, the background here is a blurry grey. 

And I need to do the background first, so the details of the twigs won't get painted over when adding it as last thing to the painting.  

I mixed the black and white and applied it to the canvas. But that turned out too dark, and streaky:

Using additional water and swirl motion:

Still too dark.
Next trick to get some of the wet paint of by placing a paper towel over it and rubbing it gently:

The result is this:

Nice, but quite the blurry, cloudy background I has aimed for. The color though seems great. Additional careful rubbing over the canvas produced this:

And since there is also a male Cardinal photo, I decided to do the pair:

On this above photo is the print out from another female Cardinal (by Laura Waterhouse), that I had saved last year for painting. The details around the eyes are different and I mistook it for a male. 

This is the male cardinal I will paint on the second canvas:

Red Cardinal by Marilou Aballe

I'm just not sure yet if I place it in the same tree, or leave it on this minimalist metal wire. Grey as background works here just the same.

(Sorry, if some photos are a bit wobbly - I was in a hurry to make them before the paint dries.)

I will update as I progress with these.