Bald Eagle | Don’t Mess With Me

Description

Title: Don’t Mess With Me
Size: 16 x 20″ (landscape orientation)
Media: handmade watercolor, Ozark foraged pigments
Substrate: watercolor paper
Pigment source: shale gray, limestone, brown sandstone, yellow sandstone, Osage root bark, sassafras leaf, russet sandstone, charred wood, black sandstone

“And although they look simple enough, all black and white like that, I have learned by now that ‘simple’ at first glance usually means anything but. First of all, they’re not ‘just’ black and white. There are a lot of subtle differences in the shades of black and white. Then there’s the white in the black and the brown in the black and the gray in the white to contend with. Once I got started and had gotten past the color blocking, I realized the feather patterns on this bird were different than any of the others I’d done so far. No bars on the eagle, but a mish-mash of something that seemed more like fish scales in arrangement.” Click here to see the making of this bald eagle painting.

Pigment sources

Stones

Brown sandstone, russet sandstone, yellow sandstone, red sandstone, green sandstone, shale, and bituminous coal.

Bone, Wood, Antler, Vine

I char and ash bones to get black and white. For black, I also char wood, antler, grapevine, and soot.

Plants

Petals of Asiatic dayflowers (blue-not used in this painting), Osage root bark (orange), grape vine (black-not used in this painting). These are the only three sources I’ve found that are relatively light stable. The Osage root and vine black are very stable, with the vine black being literally reduced to carbon it is technically another earth pigment like the stones. The blue is stable for many years if protected from UV light, but I’m not certain exactly how long it will last.

 

Reference Image Credits

Photo by Terry Stanfill.

Prints of this Bald Eagle Painting

All of my prints are processed in house with a professional giclée art printer using archival inks. The paper is archival watercolor paper for high quality prints.

Notecards

Notecards are 4 x 5.5″, blank inside, and printed on the same professional printer as my prints. Each are packaged in a clear bag with an envelope and the insert that tells the story of how I began my watercolor journey with Ozark pigments. All of my artwork is available on notecards, and you can mix and match to order a set of 5 for a discount. Sets are not individually packaged, but are attractively presented together in a box. Click here to find out more about notecard sets. (Will link when listing is live. in the meantime, email me at madison@wildozark.com to order a set. I’ll invoice you.)

NFT Art

This artwork is available as an NFT.

More Info

All of my paintings begin with foraging for rocks, bones, clay, or other pigment sources. If you’d like to read a little more about my life of foraging for rocks, read this post: She Delivers in Spades. If you’d like to see how the paints are actually made, read this post: Making Smooth Paint from Rock Dust.

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Contact Me:

email: madison@wildozark.com
IG: @wildozark
FB: @wildozark
Twitter: @wildozark