Jeeves
11 x 14 inches
watercolor and colored pencil
This is
my first portrait of a winged guest we've been hosting since
December. Frank first saw this off season visitor, which we named
Jeeves, in early December. He is a Harris Sparrow, and is a VERY
RARE sighting here in Kentucky. In the months since, we've had
numerous human visitors, of the bird watching variety (sorta like
Jeeves groupies), all come to catch a sighting of this rare avian
visitor.
Frank
and I have SO enjoyed talking with the Jeeves “groupies”, and
Jeeves has shown his appreciation for the attention (or maybe just
for the corn and sunflower seed offerings) by showing up for the
human visitors, with no one going away without seeing Jeeves. We
named him Jeeves, because at the time we had been binge watching an
old PBS series, “Jeeves and Wooster”, and the Harris sparrow with
his crisp feathers, just had to be called the valet's name of
Jeeves.
I did
this watercolour/colored pencil Jeeves portrait from an early photo
taken by Frank. Jeeves is very good at hiding out among other birds,
but his white breast and bold black chest feathers and pink bill,
are the key to his identity. Frank had spotted him, on a gloomy low
light December day, and knew immediately he had found something
special. In the succeeding weeks, Frank made up various rock feeding
“stations” with corn or other types of bird seed feed, to
convince Jeeves to hang around. Luckily for me, the “corn rock”
and larger sunflower seed rocks “framed” Jeeves in the photo I
used for reference of the painting.
I used
watercolor to give a bit of light and colour to the mostly monochrome
background brush, which is a favorite hide out for Jeeves. Colored
pencils were great for picking out the details on Jeeves and to
delineate some of the seed details in the foreground.
Just
recently, Frank has gotten some superb Jeeves' photos, and I am
working on another painting of our visitor......it is gonna be his
“glamour” portrait.
You can
see more of Frank's photos of Jeeves, and numerous other bird
visitors here on Frank's Flickr site:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/123438032@N04/
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