Few reference photos are really worth replicating in their exact state, but this was one of them.
I had a “Birds of Missouri” magazine or book or something and really wanted to play with using the palette knife as a sculpting tool, and BIRD TEXTURE was the perfect outlet for that technique.
You’ve probably gotta zoom in to really see it, but with this piece I layered in different colors with lighter ones over darker ones and scraped the palette knife along the paint to make super fine lines that ended up looking a lot like feathers.
It was a fun experiment, and the way the colors ended up popping became one of my favorite things. I gave this piece to my daughter to hang in her room because she loves birds, so it’s not currently for sale.
But I also haven’t done much realism since then, save the occasional pencil still-life to keep that hand-eye coordination fresh.
Why? It’s not that I don’t appreciate realism as an art form. There are some who are absolute masters of their craft, whether painting, drawing, or sculpture, who create such strikingly realistic works it’s a wonder the works themselves aren’t alive.
I think, when you’re a child, once you become self-aware, there’s this compulsion to create art that “looks correct,” because it’s inherently impressive when you’re little and you’re able to draw something realistic without tracing it. It’s a quick and easy way to determine someone’s skill at a craft.
But craft isn’t the same as art. Craft is a mode of expression, whereas art is expression itself. When we’re little kids, before we “know” that our art is supposed to look like something or “be correct,” we simply create because we enjoy creating. Maybe it’s the feel of the paint on the paper, or the pencil in hand. Maybe it’s the colors or the textures. We create because it feels good to create.
In adulthood, as artists, I feel like our highest form is an amalgamation of those two mindsets. We get the years of experience with craft and exactness and we get to apply that to our imaginations and feelings.
We get a mix of both, and my art nowadays is a balance of both. I reserve detail to key elements that I want to draw attention to, but the rest is pure imagination. It’s also the most pleasurable way to experience art, for me. I love switching between the pragmatic and dreamy, the exact and the uninhibited.