Red-shouldered Hawk

Background

I have been a fan of John James Audubon since I first saw his paintings in books when I was a teenager. There was something so iconic about his birds, often perched on a branch with a stark white background. The birds became symbols of wilderness and nature for me.

I recently revisited some of his pieces in a wonderful oversize compendium that my wife bought me several years ago for Christmas. Even at 12″ x 15.25″, this baby elephant-scale book is tiny compared to his originals which were completed on double elephant sheets, a whopping 26″ x 38″. Nevertheless, I attempted to create my closest approximation of Audubon’s work as a tribute to his influence on me as an artist.

Here is his Red-shouldered Hawk painting. It was painted some time around 1826. I will focus on the top bird for this tribute. This is my Mt. Everest.

John James Audubon’s Plate 56 – Red-shouldered Hawk

Preparation

Because of the massive reduction in scale, there were certain things I would simply not be able to reproduce, like the pen and ink work detailing every single feather barbule. I could do a rough approximation, but not a line-for-line reproduction.

I was also unable to identify exactly what paints Audubon used for his pieces, so I adopted a Classical Palette as described by the wonderful site, Handprint.com. This palette consists of pigments readily available during the early to mid-19th century, the height of Audubon’s production for the Birds of America.

The palette I used consisted of: yellow ochre (PY43), raw sienna(PY43), gamboge (PY150/PR209), burnt sienna (PR101), light red (PR101), burnt umber (PBr7), raw umber (PBr7), vermilion (substituted with scarlet lake PR188), carmine lake (substituted with Anthraquinoid Red PR177), indigo blue (substituted with indanthrene blue PB60), Prussian blue (PB27), lamp black (PBk6 + 7) and India ink.

Paints that are common today, like Ultramarine Blue, weren’t produced until after Audubon’s time. I have tried to stay true to those paints available to him during that time or at worst, a modern substitute with the same handling characteristics.

I began with graphite pencil to create a detailed sketch of the original in my sketchbook.

Sketch of the layout ready for transfer to watercolor paper

Painting Process

With this roadmap created, it was time to transfer the image to my watercolor paper and get to work. I initially wanted to paint the darker details with watercolor but after studying his original, it was obvious he had created a lot of the textures and details with ink and then washed over this to add color. He might have added ink after some of the washes, but the lines are so crisp, I would argue that this was done before the washes since the paper would produce crisper, more refined lines prior to adding gum arabic in the form of a watercolor wash. I therefore proceeded to reproduce as much as I could in ink and then washed over these areas and added details where necessary.

After the pen and ink work was completed, I began adding color, starting with the head and working my way towards the tail. I worked down to the feet, then completed the branches, before finishing finally with the lichen grown on the branches. These required not only solid color but each was outlined with what appeared in my reproduction as a brighter green but appears more like pencil in another reproduction I have seen. I stuck with pencil as it added a more realistic appearance and was simpler to reproduce at this scale.

It took a few days but here is my final piece.

Completed painting