Rufous Hummingbird Painting

Frequent Flier
20x16 Oil on Linen

After forming the hummingbird, flowers, and main branch of this painting, I was unhappy with the bland negative space to the right side of the bird. In order to solve this problem, I thought about placing dabs of pastel paint colors and several green leaves, but the addition of a thin light-toned branch seemed to work well. It is satisfying whenever you can problem solve paintings to a definite sense of completion.

If I could keep our hummingbird feeders full, there would be plenty of these little fellows flying around the back yard, almost all year long. In the spring of this year, I was consistent about filling the feeders for several weeks and they even attracted two major fans. But then I grew weary of changing out the fluid :( It may have been the types of feeders I was using. One of them rusted and the others were challenging to keep the nectar from getting everywhere. If any of you have suggestions for an easy-to-use nectar feeder, I would love to hear about it!

California photographer, Carl Jackson, provided the reference photograph for this painting.
Thanks, Carl! Please visit his website here> http://www.cbjphoto.com/