Exclusive: Flight Patterns Experiments

When visiting a Dutch Island, I started painting the landscape. But I also really liked the bird swarms there, and experimented with how to capture them.

Time was a big factor – once I finished the actual dunes and trees, the sunset itself was gone. I went back and added more the next day … though it looked quite different. To capture the dramatic effect, I did most of it in the studio later from reference.

Seaside Painting

Background of the seaside.

Anyways, the core of the picture were the birds. But just dropping some in, would have not captured the feeling they gave of swirling around. What I planned was to add layers. So on purpose I made the colors stronger.

Below is how it looks with a half transparent paper on top. It’s based on the experiments I did with the Autumn Berries picture. A more detailed view of the layers is in an Patreon post.

Seaside Layer

Background of the seaside.

The next step would be to add the birds. The layers also allow me to experiment a bit.
As reference I took videos of them flying around – also because (as I noticed the first day going there), the birds did only stay for half an hour or so.

So here was a first test.
Probably inspired by the Xavi Bou bird photographs I know … though I wanted the birds to be more readable.

Seaside Birds

First tests on the bird patterns. Really like the soft effect of the sky behind.

After some failed attempts, I still have quite some work left to figure this out. But it’s fun to keep at it.