Glossy Ibis

Though Glossy Ibis are fascinating to see as silhouettes in the sky, and I wish I'd been successful in my field sketches of this so I could show you, they're even more fascinating up close. But this year at Cape May, NJ was the first time we had the opportunity to see them up close, not just in one place but in many. I'm not sure if we just got there as they were returning from migration, or if they were just passing through in migration.

The above watercolor is 11x14 inches, somewhat large for me, though not really large for a watercolor. But many of the watercolors I post are quick watercolors on smaller paper of lesser quality. They're more sketches than finished work. But this is a finished work.

And as with many of my finished works it has lost some of the spontaneity and freshness of the quicker studies. I don't like this but I've accepted it. At least for awhile the price of doing a more developed work on good paper is that I might overwork it in the process. I'm not unhappy with this as a painting but I am unhappy with it as a watercolor since it doesn't take advantage of the brilliant light effects that watercolor's transparency offers. Still the first step in solving a problem is acknowledging it. I'm at step one and eager to move on to step two.