Tail Feathers: More birds

Here are couple more birds, a Blue Jay and a Baltimore Oriole. These are very easy to paint, and are still rewarding with minimal effort. For the oriole, it was just a matter of getting the color onto the right spots (though, I would have liked a brighter orange.) Granted, some of the details take a little patience, but the rest of the bird took all of 10 or 15 minutes (of mostly dry- and overbrushing.)

I kind of wished the armor wasn't there (on his belly) so that more of the orange could be displayed, but there is still more color here than there would have been had I painted this as a starling.

The Blue Jay took a little more planning. I started off with an overbrush of the top with a nice, middle blue followed with lighter blue. I went one more level lighter on the secondary feathers and the wing tips. The underside was overbrushed dark gray -- lighter gray toward the wing tips. Then I drybrushed some brown over the transition between the dark and light grays.

Next came the white tips of the secondaries and tail feathers, starting with light gray followed with white. I also overbrushed some light gray/white onto the face. Then came the black stripes on the feathers and the markings on the face. The remaining details fell into place: silver armor, brown leather straps and a check pattern on the side armor(?) For a final touch, I watered down my black paint a little (ink will work just fine -- I was just too lazy,) and I lined the between individual feathers to help define things a little more.

Next up is the smallest of the birds, which I will paint as an Eastern Meadowlark. It will take a little extra planning as did the Jay. But once the plan is in place, it should paint up quickly. Then it's off to paint riders and ground troops!