Why and how to paint bird feathers?

Painting a bird's plumage for an artist means mixing technical data and poetry. Indeed, not only do feathers allow to determine the species, the sex, the age and even the state of health of the bird and are in a way its "visiting card" but, in addition, they inexorably evoke a certain fragility, softness and vulnerability. They catch the light beautifully and offer the painter infinite possibilities. For an animal painter, the plumage is a mixture of subtlety and complexity.

With a very fine brush, the artist creates each feather by giving it a movement. Each category of feather has a particular implantation. To respect it is to give coherence to the plumage.

To combine both lightness and density, it is necessary to paint it in small, jerky strokes with a small, fine brush. Often quite clear, the difficulty is to bring out the different shades that compose it. To do this, the painter starts from the darkest shades to go to the lightest. The tip of the feathers is often enhanced with a pure white.

To paint feathers, it is also sometimes necessary to retranscribe a certain delicacy. To do this, the painter makes each feather, taking care to respect their arrangement and also their superimpositions.

A palette of colors rather reduced. Unless you are painting island birds with shimmering colors, a fairly limited color palette is sufficient to paint the plumage of a country bird. This is not to say that there is no difficulty in setting up the different shades. Some plumages, like that of the woodcock for example, are real challenges for a painter. In these cases, the animal painter makes the feathers of the bird one by one. Then, once all finished, she takes everything back in its entirety to adjust the contrasts and colors.

The wet feathers are agglutinated and form a point. The latter is always lighter than the base of the feathers. You have to play on the contrasts to give the impression that the feather tufts are standing on one side or the other.

It often happens that the feathers, under a ray of light, offer an absolutely magnificent spectacle. They become transparent. To achieve this effect in painting, it is essential to use a painting medium in order to make fine glazes. In this case, the artist always uses a very clean palette to avoid unwanted colors. Of course, each layer must be perfectly dry before applying a new layer of glaze. Contrasts must be accentuated without exaggeration to avoid "weighing down" the whole.