Spring is here! Well, not really. It will be a few weeks before things start to green up and another six or seven weeks before the warblers show up in New York. In the meantime, it’s 40°F, raining, and gray, and the only warblers I’ll be seeing for a while are the ones in my sketchbook.

Tips and Techniques– You can see from my color notes that I used very few pigments to paint each of these birds. When choosing colors for a subject, experiment with a few mixes and see if you can narrow them down to three or four main pigments. This helps to keep your painting unified and reduces the risk of getting muddy colors from mixing too many paints. (Materials: Handbook Journal Co. 140lb watercolor sketchbook, Micron 005 black pen, watercolor)