Apologies for the long break between the last blog post until now. I have been very busy of late and also found myself a bit burnt out so needed a break from wildlife painting. but now I'm back and have been working on two of them. One of which is now finished.
I hadn't painted an insect in a while and was going through my college work where I had done quite a few and I decided to make use of a photo I took when I was at Hothfield Heaths nature reserve of a female banded demoiselle. Females are greenish with copper tinted wings where as the males are blue bodied with clear wings with black 'bands' near the ends; hence the name.
I planned out my painting with an initial sketch of the damselfly and thistle in burnt sienna before then working on the background, trying to retain the sketch for when I paint them later. The background was done in two layers using a fan brush to produce a softer look.
I then moved on to work on the thistle, working with a base colour wash and adding increasing highlights and shadows as I go.
I use this same method on the damselfly, here you can see the initial dark wash on the body.
Once the dragonfly was blocked in I then added some details in the eye and thorax and highlights to the legs. The thorax is mainly done in greyscale so I can glaze in colour as there is a metallic sheen to the insect which my standard colours would struggle to bring out.
Colours are glazed along the body and I tint the wings copper before then adding the veining on them and start working on all the colours in the wing highlights of which there are gold, green, blue, pink, and copper.
I add white and again glaze colour into the insect to help bring out the colours and add the final details to the wings.
I hope you like my portrait.
