Called back to the Ba

This week we continue the struggle to make something coherent from this Ba bird idea, and - I've changed my mind pretty comprehensively on how it should look.  I decided at the end of the last blog that the original is too big, the body too elongated, and that it must conform more to the proportions of a bird.  I said that I would base the bird body on that of an Egyptian wagtail, but now I've begun to doubt that choice.

There are all kinds of needless things that you can worry about with this sort of thing, and one of the worries I continually trouble myself with is ' is it authentic, is it accurate?'  In fact it doesn't matter at all, but now I began to ask, 'what kind of bird was it that the Egyptians really used?'

I think I mentioned last week that they used a variety of birds such as stalks and falcons, but I now found myself going back onto the internet to search through all the Egyptian images of the Ba bird available.  And the answer is that mostly they seem to be hawks - falcons in fact.  Some depict a very long legged bird that I took to be an Ibis, but the colour the Egyptians show the bird seems darker than that of the actual bird.  It might of course be one of those birds that change their plumage at different times of the year - and there you are, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

The basic shape of your basic Ba bird.

So I have gone back to the Egyptian work and trust the original source.  They worked out how to make this crazy idea make some visual sense and so I now accept that my Ba bird will have the appearance of a falcon, and I dutifully sourced some good photos of falcons that showed me not only the size and proportions but also the feather formation. But another problem is looming on the horizon, the arms.  I can see they're going to be awkward because of where they emerge from the body of the bird, but they are an important part of this characters appearance.

That struggle is yet to come however, as next I'll concentrate on the wings, using a reference as a guide for the size and shape of the feathers that change in size as they go down a bird's wing.  The wings of the peregrine  falcon are a bluish grey with soft almost metallic effect light grey edges to each feather so blending and softening the hard edges of the lines I use is important.
 

Starting the task of placing in the feathers.

 The feathers have almost a tessellated look to them which is important to get right at the start, so that the pattern can continue correctly.  Another minor problem is understanding how the wings of the bird fold together, but artists are past masters at faking this kind of thing, and if there's something they don't understand they put it in shadow or blend it into something near, but only when they judge that they can get away with it.

Most of the feathers in, and some of the black marks on the breast and legs.

It's in the blessed knowledge of my fellow human's ignorance that I can fake the way the wings actually come together at the end of the tail, and be happy with the percentage of bird mad experts who will spot the discrepancies right away.  And now I can start on the peculiar patterns the falcon has on its chest and legs, strange cross like striations of black that cover all the light parts.

The subject through it's different stages.  Click on the image to see it slightly bigger.

The downright 'oddness' of this subject is not lost on me, in fact it's one of the things that drew me to it but putting the elements of bird and human together in a more realistic way then any ancient Egyptian would have done has thrown up a lot of problems.  The slow progress has even underlined for me what a dull image I've made of it, without even a turn of the head in a dramatic posture to relieve the boredom.  I could have chosen something more dynamic to do with the wings for instance.   But you begin with an 'interior' vision of what you want and work towards it, and sometimes you become fixated on an idea without re-evaluating enough.

Next week - those dreaded arms!

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Called to the Ba.

No, that isn't a typo in the title smarty-pants;  it refers to a type of exotic and mythical creature, part of ancient Egyptian religious beliefs.  I mentioned the Ba bird a few blogs ago, and stated that I'd like to have a go at illustrating it.  You may know, or remember from the last blog that the Ba was one of three spiritual entities believed by the Egyptians to inhabit the tomb of a deceased person after the tomb was sealed.

The Ba represented the character of the deceased, the thing that made them who they were.  Oh and did I mention that they're birds with human heads and arms, so, ideal for the average bird watchers notepad.  Ba's could travel around in the real world in any shape if they needed to, possibly putting right the misdeeds of the dead person, or seeing to last minute problems. (was that life insurance policy up to date?)  But they had to return to the tomb to witness the weighing of their masters soul before re-entering the body of the deceased.  A workload like that would ruffle anybodies feathers.

As usual with this digital illustration thing, I start to draw on a layer with a slate grey line as large as I want because I will shrink the drawing down, as I need more room.  This time round I decided to use a layer for a very rough sketch and brought the opacity down to three of four percent so the lines were barely visible.  I then put another layer above and drew the actual lines on this.  It helps you judge better where you really want the lines and the faint lines don't detract from a change of mind.

Beginning of the drawing with paint additions

I began with the head, as most artists do, and if it's a full face I start my line almost always at the point where the bridge of the nose slides into the furthest eye socket.  It's a good point to start, because its very easy to then judge where the tip of the nose and nostril should be, and from that you can then easily judge how much of the furthest side of the face should be visible.  Easier said than done I hear you say?  Well, maybe, it all depends how far down the road you are.  

Close up of the paint, showing the way shadows are placed.

  I probably show all the traits of lack of patience, as I want to start painting at once, and so begin to apply a yellowish base colour onto the same layer as the drawing.  I place in a slightly darker yellow for the first indications of shadows, and a yellowish grey for darker shadows, at all times avoiding true black.  The hair or wig will be a very dark reddish brown.  I use a grey brown and work it around the eyes, covering the eyelids, and fill in the spaces where the eyes will be with the yellow of the skin.

Grey shadows defining the nose, neck and eyes.  The spaces of the eyes are also filled with yellow.

The dark wig will have long trailing pieces hanging down each shoulder, across which the arms will cut.  I have placed a little light on the face, on the nose and cheekbone and around the mouth, but I'm keeping it low for the time being.  Here I have to admit that I'm not sure how the whole picture will look.  This is the basis of many of my failures over the years; I have a vague idea of what I want, but then try to make it up as I go.  However gradually I am getting a clearer idea, I want an image of the full Ba bird, holding a scroll of papyrus, as if showing it to the viewer.

Faint grey lines used to work out positioning of the arms and scroll.

This means showing the whole bird body, with its tail feathers and long legs.  I wondered at this stage how the Egyptians themselves depicted the particular birds they used in their drawings and sculptures of the Ba.  Were they one definite bird, and was that bird still around, or had it gone extinct, as I believe some of the animals of ancient Egypt have?   I was curious, as I wanted a guide for the feathers of the bird.  The Egyptians seemed to depict the birds in many different ways, sometimes as hawks, sometimes as stalks or cranes.  I looked online and found a common Egyptian bird that I liked and which seemed to resemble some of the ancient depictions - a yellow wagtail.  I'm less worried that this isn't authentic than I'm happy to have something to use as a reference. 

But I now see something more worrying than a bad choice of Egyptian bird.  The figure is becoming unbalanced, too elongated.  I need to concentrate on making the body smaller.  To make this work the bird should have a big head and a petite little bird body, with quite long legs and arms.  It's going wrong, but when that happens you have to fight it until it goes right.

Lets see what we have next week.

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Painting the Lions of Nectanebo.

This exercise is intended as a guide for anyone with a desire to do a bit of painting, who has a little skill, and doesn't mind following my dry and slightly erratic instructions.  It's not meant to be the last word on anything, but only meant as a 'tryout', something that might be followed for as far as is desired.  It might be possible to pick up a few useful points along the way - but if not, then at least we got our paint boxes out and had a try.

If I'm going to colour a real drawing on real paper or board - with real paint, I usually start with a ground colour, and for me, my preference is always yellow ochre.  This is an excellent neutral colour that can be used in many ways, (not least as a component of flesh colour) as a background colour its useful because it can be used to 'kill' almost any other colour (therefore good for painting over things and making corrections), and its light so it won't obscure a drawing if its applied as a thin glaze.  It's also good for drawing onto as the lines stand out well against it.

I either paint in gouache or acrylic (rarely in oils or watercolour - too complicated) and all types of painting have their pitfalls, you just have to know them.  With acrylic you have to remember that it's a form of coloured liquid plastic, and that once it's allowed to dry - that's it.  When dry, it can be successfully scratched off glass, hard plastics, and polished wood but get it on clothing and that's another matter. If you get it on clothes that you care about, you'll have to completely immerse the garment in water and start scrubbing right away - run, run - don't let that paint get a chance to dry.  But as they say in the old books - I digress.

I'm going to use acrylic for this exercise, because it dries very fast and because of this I shall be using it more like watercolour or gouache in that you can apply it in dilute form in thin washes.  When you put the colour on thinly you can see the drawing lines through it.  Also, the wetter the paint is, the more time you have to do things with it - such as blending or mixing more colour in to it on the surface.  The board I'm using is Daler Rowney Line and Wash 'Fine', and I'm using five paints, namely -  yellow ochre, ultramarine blue, burnt umber, titanium white and burnt sienna.

So I will paint a layer of thin dilute yellow ochre over the entire drawing, and then wait for it to dry out completely.

The original drawing, with a thin wash of yellow ochre.

When it is dry, (shouldn't take more than ten minutes - depending on how much water you mixed with the paint) we need to start to re-define the lines of the drawing by using a darker paint to accentuate the more important lines.  It is up to the artist to decide what colour they want to use for this; I usually use burnt umber, raw from the tube and mixed with enough water to keep it smooth and not too dark.  Its a slow easy process of building up an image, the shading and cross hatching lines of the drawing can be ignored, they are important if you just want the drawing as they help to give form, but less so in a painting process.

The main outlines of the drawing darkened with burnt umber.

It's all about washes, and touches of less watery paint to give shadow and depth.

As we apply watery washes onto certain places, we have to be ready to use a large brush dipped in clean water to help smooth the edges of paint areas.  Remember acrylic will dry with a strong edge, and it may be difficult to get rid of the edges later.   Throughout the painting process you should be using brushes to smooth out all paint edges, so that a smooth transition between areas may be achieved.

Always check that your main lines are still visible, and haven't faded away under the washes of other paints already applied.  Go over them with darker paint if they need it.  About now we can go over some of the deeper shadow areas with a darker colour, and I would use burnt umber mixed with ultramarine to get something that looks almost black.  Painters rarely use real black as it's a very deadening substance, which doesn't mix well with other colours except in minute quantities.

This darker paint should be used to accentuate particular points on the drawing to emphasise shadow and bring the image forward.  At this stage what you should have is a flat yellow ochre square over the original drawing, with the drawings main lines  over-painted with a darker colour, and the lines of the main shadow areas painted in with a very dark brown. 
 

What we have at this stage - a yellow ochre covering, with an umber outline, and with the heavily shadowed lines darkened using a mixture of umber and ultramarine.

Now we can begin to use washes of paint to bring out the form.  Although the finished image is a colder grey brown, it has like many things, warmer colours showing on its surface like yellows and red browns.  It's easier to place these colours down at the beginning and let them 'bleed' through than try to apply them later.  As I said earlier, its a process of building up with layers of wash.  So I will now delineate shadows with washes of brown/yellow, created by mixing yellow ochre and burnt sienna with a lot of water.  The consistency you need is so the paint is like a puddle of melted butter.  If the colour seems too rich then quickly mix in more water. 
 

The first washes are applied.

But to move on, we need now to introduce some colder colours to help with darkening the deepest shadows.  I mixed burnt umber, ochre and ultramarine to make shadow washes on the left side of the head applied with lots of water, always using the brush to smooth out the edges.  Note that as we go on, the original lines and crosshatching begin to disappear under the colour washes.
 

Darker washes are applied at left side of head, under nose and chin.

The washes should be concentrated under the lion's cheekbones, under the chin, along the left side of the head, down the left side and under the nose and around the sides of the muzzle.  The light is coming from the right, so shadow is strongest on the left.  Put a little wash in the eye sockets and also into the hollows of the ears.

As in watercolour, I've tried to use the lightness of the board, allowing this to show through for the lightest parts of the face, such as the nose, muzzle and chin.  As you progress and build up the layers of wash, you have to keep asking yourself if you like it with a thin layer of paint, where you might still see some of the underlying drawing showing through.  The drawing showing is not wrong, but a little thicker paint here and there might be more to your taste.
 

The finished lion.

In the finished image I've put a little white onto the top and tip of the nose, a trace along the bottom lip and used some white mixed with yellow ochre on the right cheek and on the whisker lines of the muzzle.  As you can see, quite a lot of the drawing can be seen, especially at the top right of the head, near the eye and around the cheek, but it would be easy to cover these lines sufficiently with washes of slightly thicker paint content.

Well if you've struggled through my dodgy account and peered at my questionable photography to this stage you are to be truly congratulated, and I hope that you can come away with at least something that's half useful.

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