[Art] Brown Honeyeater as Totem.

[moonvoice]

A regular visitor to thickets in the bushland
and all the shrubbery in my Mum's garden.
Drab-looking at first glance,
they none-the-less lift my spirits every time I see them.


Brown Honeyeater as Totem
Lichmera indistincta
Original @ Etsy / Prints @ DeviantArt

Comments

[silverjackal]

I really like the colours in this, the bronzy shades in particular. And the subtle shading, and the green. This really does put me in mind of dense thickets in late summer. :)

[moonvoice]

I love honeyeaters so very much. :) I almost wanted to give him showier colours, but he insisted on this array and in the end I loved it too.

[gone_fishing]

I like the subtle colouring of the bird, and the shading in the background.

[moonvoice]

I wish I could show these birds to people. They're awesome, even if they are quite subtly colorued / drably coloured.

[ariestess]

So very pretty.

[moonvoice]

Thank you. :)

[starstrider]

I love the background, it accents the Honeyeater perfectly. =)

Do you mind me asking what brand of iridescent paint you use? I'm looking into getting some silvery iridescent to use on some shoes. I might not have many options at the nearby stores, so I might wind up getting Golden brand, but I thought I'd ask. =)

[moonvoice]

I use Semco because it's reliable and inexpensive for gold, silver, platinum, bronze and this particular bronze-gold in this image. For other spectrums (like pink, red, blue and brighter greens) I use Daler & Rowney Pearlescent Liquid Ink, which are a bit more expensive but last forever, however, they can be finicky to apply. And then finally for pure pigment in white, black, two-tone and other metallic shades I use pure powder pigment which must be manually made into 'paint' by Jacquard Products. I tend to use a mix of glaze medium and binder which must be purchased separately, but it does make the most satisfying white opalescent/iridescent paint of any I've come across so far.

Oh! And for opalescent/thin shininess that I sometimes put on raven's wings, and into the chakra circles, I use Jo Sonja's Gouache Iridescent range, which comes in six shades; turquoise, blue, green, gold, pink and purple.

/ramble.

There might be a difference in brands available to you depending on what Western Australia can get relatively inexpensively. Art supplies are always more expensive here than they are anywhere else in Australia, or for the matter, most of the rest of the world, due to being the most isolated major city in the world.

[starstrider]

Awesome, thanks!

Yeah. I'm thinking I can look it up in my UW-Madison Art Supply store catalog and find some other brands, but I'd have to go downtown (plus that store is really marked up), not that I should be complaining about either of those to *you* -- being in such an isolated city would be really frustrating. Though, oddly enough, whenever I look for the large dressage bits I need for Toler online, I always find a bunch in Western Australia. I don't quite understand that, but hey!

While we're at it; are there any brands you've tried and hated?

[moonvoice]

Western Australia is a massive equestrian state (for a small population, we have a significant equestrian centre, and Pat Parelli has been here himself a few times). We hold our own. ;) But one of the reasons you find a lot of the materials coming out of Western Australia is because in some industries we get so sick of paying the earth to ship stuff over not knowing if it will fit; we manufacture a lot of horse tack now and that ends up going overseas instead. Alas it is not so with art supplies!

Also the Jillaroo/Cowboy culture is very big here, and those in certain areas are used to making their own tack and dressage gear. That probably contributed to it.

Art stores in general seem to suffer from massive inflation. Would you ever go online? I shop at an online Australian store - which alas, only ships within Australia, but I'm sure the US would have some comparable stores that might give you a greater selection at competitive prices? Paints and stuff tend to be pretty well-packaged, so you don't have to worry about leads breaking in pencils and stuff.

The pearlescent ink has the greatest range of colours, but is really tricky to use and often needs multiple applications (which is frustrating on thin swirly lines in the 'as totems' pictures).

Otherwise, I tend to avoid really commercial, highschool level acrylic metallic paints. It's not that they apply smoothly, but their actual 'metallicness' (shine? Whatever), is just not very vibrant. It's also *really* hard to find a good metallic silver paint. The Semco one is quite good, but most tend to be quite flat and sometimes dry more 'grey paint with a tiny bit of shine' than 'silver paint with a high amount of shine.' Avoid Chromacryl for their silver. Jo Sonja is - from memory - okay. And also a popular brand too.

The pearlescent ink by the brand I mentioned above also have some really amazing blues; which is good, because it can be hard to find rich, shiny, metallic-style blues.

[starstrider]

That makes sense. I knew it was a pretty good equestrian mecca, but I guess I never expected it to be much of a tack maker because I've never really encountered many WA saddlery companies before.

The duster I own for rainy days was made in WA, though! (And I got it at the local horse fair a few years back.)

I try to avoid buying things online only because right now my grandmother pays most of my credit card bills (on her insistence), so rather than deal with "No, I'll pay for this, really" I just try not to buy anything with it. There's another big art supply store in town that isn't as marked up, but I've never cared for their acrylic painting supplies; they're the place to go for drawing materials, papers, canvasses, stretchers, and pretty much anything else, though. They have excellent brans for oil painting, but for whatever reason their nicest line of acrylics is Liquitex, which I really don't like. It might have something to do with their being the main competition for the UW art store, though, and the UW has a lot of nice acrylics.

Anyway, thanks for the recs! I'll keep my eyes open. I have to go get some painting supplies today, but I'm going to wait on the iridescent stuff until I know what everywhere else carries--I'm just going to the nearby craft store anyway, which has a nice selection of general acrylic brands (and the best selection of brushes, too, actually). =)

[white_rabbit]

I do so love the way you capture birds so, so well. :) And the colours, very warm.

[moonvoice]

Thank you! :)

[bodlon]

Ooh, lovely. Rich tones, and they work beautifully together.

[moonvoice]

Thanks!

[ex_wolfborn415]

I love how the bird is perching on the sweep of color. That really makes the piece pleasing to the eye.