Two Cormorants…

This week I wanted to take a painting I had painted for a workshop demonstration and add a minimal amount of elements around it in order to complete a composition. This was purely so that I could see how quickly I could go from demo piece to composition…

I have been looking through my Birds portfolio and spotted one of my Cormorants paintings which I had painted for a University of Leicester workshop:

As those who attended the workshop at the Botanic Gardens back in 2018 will hopefully remember I had painted this pair of Cormorants, the land and the reedy grasses above.

I had painted this at the bottom of a large piece of grass paper so there was at least the same amount of space above the top of the head of the Cormorant on the land as below it.

From this start I decided to add the land spit on the right, above the line of the top cormorant’s head. This then meant I could add the spit of land on the left further up the page along with the distant mountains.

The final part was a little thought that I wanted to add a man fishing as the birds were not…

Once done, I then added the Calligraphy: my name followed by a Double Happiness seal alongside the year, 2018 followed by a fu seal.

All in all, probably about 15 minutes painting (mostly Calligraphy practice) for a finished picture.

Let me know what you have finished very simply that takes a picture from a draft, sketch, element to a finished composition. I would love to hear what you’ve been able to do when you’ve been pushed for time but wanted to paint!

Best wishes

Paul