Mini Painting: Patch the Cockatiel

Just last month we were devastated to lose our beautiful cockatiel, Patch. Having previously painted him in watercolours (check out my cockatiels tag) with his partners Georgie and JayJay, I wanted to do a small acrylic painting of just him. It's been a while since I had my trusty acrylics out - so long in fact that some of them had dried up! But it was good to get back in to painting, and my husband was thrilled with this small gift to remember a very handsome boy.

Cockatiels Watercolour II

I did a watercolour painting of our cockatiels, Georgie and Patch, a couple of years ago - you can see it here. Sadly, in 2016, Georgie passed away, and we subsequently welcomed a new cockatiel to our little family, JayJay. This, of course, meant we needed another painting! This painting is more informal than the last one - I wanted to give the impression of feathers rather than using precise brush strokes, and I wanted some splatter going on! Despite this, it really captures the two of them nicely.

Cockatiels Watercolour

Rather than giving my husband cards, I try to give him paintings and drawings which can adorn our walls all year round! The only members of our animal family missing from our walls were our beautiful birds, Georgie (left) and Patch (right).

I really enjoyed picking up my watercolours again, and approached them with a gentler technique for me, really building up colour slowly. I think it works really well with the feathers. I also really enjoyed using my water brushes for this project, I felt so much more control over tone.

Georgie is a very shy bird, so not only did she make it very difficult for me to take reference photos, I thought it was apt for her to be hiding behind Patch, as that is how we normally see her anyway!