I really hope the answer is "yes"!
Last year I began with a series of abstract paintings - a challenge which I found very difficult and with mixed results. It was very educational though and helped 'loosen' my style and helped me to explore diffferent ways of painting.
Towards the end of last year I completed one of my best paintings - Little Grebe. The focus of the painting is a small backlit Little Grebe on beautiful glassy water. I think the painting works because of the water. To me the bird is incidental. It's main purpose is to disturb the water to create some interesting patterns. I've decided to trawl through my photographic archive to find more subjects which focus on the outline rather than the detail of the bird itself and to play with the idea for a few months using different reference images, different media and treatments.
To be honest this silhouette view (its a luxury to see the whole bird) is the view that many birdwatchers get of birdlife - in poor light conditions, often with it's back to you, in flightt and at distance. Identification of these birds is referred to as 'jizz' - an abstraction of GIS - general impression and shape. This phrase came originally from the American military who taught it as a method for identifying aircraft.
This painting is unmistakeably an Avocet due to its body shape and particularly it's bill shape. You don't need all the other details to recognise it and I want to experiment with this and focusing on creating a decorative image of birds and their behaviour without delving into the detail.
Unfortunately I seem to discard a lot of silhouette photos and so I have found a few to work with but not as many as I need. If you have any that I could paint please email them to me. Ideally I am looking for British birds captured in a position which makes them easily identifiable
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