Birds are the best-represented subject in this catalog, and there is a reason for it: the artists Ledgebay licenses from are wildlife painters. Here is what is actually available, which designs suit a first canvas, and the single habit that makes feathers look like feathers.
The bird designs
Hummingbird — a Hautman Brothers painting of a hummingbird at blue morning glories climbing a weathered post. Broad soft background, wide petal shapes, a coherent palette. One of the better first kits.
Rural Route Bluebirds — James Hautman. Two bluebirds on an old mailbox with white blossom around it. Forgiving, and the strong blue against the cream blossom is satisfying to paint.
Orchard Puzzle — the other Hautman Brothers piece, and the most demanding bird design here. A dozen songbirds in blossoming branches: cardinal, blue jay, oriole, chickadees, goldfinch. Beautiful and slow. Take the 16x20.
Cabin Fever Doughty — cardinals in falling snow beside a cabin. The red against the blue-white snow does most of the work.
Nature's Blessings — Russ Duerksen. Canada geese by a weathered fence with red flowers.
Enchanted Woods — chickadees in snowy woods. Genuinely demanding, mostly because of the snow-laden branches.
Sunset Swans — a cottage garden and pond at sunset.
Guiding Light — a clifftop lighthouse with an eagle over the water. More landscape than bird portrait, and one of the easier kits.
Morning Glory — a marsh at sunrise with a white egret in the reeds and an owl coming through.
And Still Waters, which is a cabin on a lake with a loon on the water, if you want a bird in a scene rather than as the subject.
You can see them together in the animals collection, and the whole range in the catalog.
The one thing about feathers
Feathers are not fur and they are not scales. They lie in overlapping rows, and each row runs in a definite direction that follows the shape of the bird underneath. Get the direction right and almost anything else can be approximate; get it wrong and no amount of detail rescues it.
On a numbered canvas the section shapes already follow that direction, which is most of the problem solved for you. What you can add is to make your brush strokes run the same way as the section rather than across it. Pull each stroke from the body outward, in the direction the feather points. It takes no extra time and the difference is visible from across the room.
Three more things worth knowing:
- Iridescence is not pigment. The flashing throat of a hummingbird and the sheen on a grackle come from microscopic structure scattering light, which is why they change as the bird turns. Paint cannot reproduce it. What works is contrast: keep the surrounding feathers darker than feels natural and leave the highlight edge hard rather than blended.
- Eyes last, highlight last of all. A bird's eye is a dark bead with one small light catch in it, and that catch is what makes it alive. Small, and do not soften it.
- Legs and feet are usually paler than you expect. Painted too dark they anchor the bird to the branch like a bracket.
Which to start with
If this is a first canvas, take Hummingbird, Rural Route Bluebirds or Guiding Light. Broad areas, clear shapes, no fussy detail.
Leave Orchard Puzzle and Enchanted Woods until you have finished one. They are the two most rewarding bird designs in the range and both are a lot of very small sections. There is nothing wrong with starting there, but do it knowingly and take the larger canvas.
Sizes are 12x16 framed, 16x20 framed and 16x20 unframed. The framed versions arrive already stretched on a wooden frame and hang on a nail the moment you finish. The unframed canvas is trimmed close to the printed edge, so it suits mounting to a board rather than stretching over your own bars.
A bird of your own
If the bird you want is one you photographed, a custom paint by numbers kit converts a photograph into a numbered canvas with matching paints, in 12x16, 16x20 or 18x24.
Birds are one of the harder subjects to photograph well for this. What converts is a bird large in the frame, in daylight, against a plain background such as sky or a blurred hedge. What does not is a small bird in a busy tree, because the conversion cannot separate the bird from the branches. Crop hard, and take the larger size.
Working through it
Largest sections first, top of the canvas downward, one color at a time across the whole canvas before rinsing. Leave the eyes and any pale highlights until the end. Pale colors often need a second coat to cover the printed number, which is normal.
Keep the 11x17 printout beside you and read the numbers off that rather than leaning over the canvas. On the busier bird designs it is the difference between an easy evening and a tiring one.
If a heavily used green or blue runs low there is a matching extra paint set for every design. The beginner's guide covers the mechanics, and finished canvases from other customers are in the customer gallery.
