Mill Pond Mute Swan

MEDIUM: Digital Painting | STYLE: Painterly Realism | SIZE: 8 x 10 | ORIENTATION: Landscape | TOOLS: Procreate, 13″ iPad Pro, Apple Pencil Pro | AVAILABILITY: Prints available.

A Mute Swan in a defensive stance is a stunning sight. It glided across the man-made, shallow Mill Pond on Long Island, a mile from the Stony Brook Wetlands in New York. The pond’s dark water, contrasted beautifully with the white bird. This inspired me to paint this digital work. The resource photograph was taken with my Nikon camera at the pond.

ARTIST’S PROCESS:  Mill Pond Mute Swan was painted in Procreate on a 13” iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil Pro, this work replicates traditional painting’s depth and texture through layered digital brushwork. It begins with careful structural drawing, followed by multiple rounds of color blocking, value refinement, and detail work on feather texture and the unusual water surface. Specific species characteristics capture its appearance and temperament. Shadow and light are created using multiple Procreate layers and specific brushes.

CHALLENGE: The pond that this swan is gliding over is a shallow body of water. The surface reflects dark from below and light from above creating a uniform opaque appearance giving little color change to suggest the depth of the water. In order to set this detail heavy bird in a more active surface I decided to mix the composition between the detailed style of the bird and an impressionistic presentation of the water using horizontal watercolor washes of multiple blue and grey hues to add depth and movement. The addition of the swan’s reflection in the foreground of the canvas adds to the impression of depth to the shallow water of the pond.

SUBJECTS AND THEMES: Wildlife — Nature — Mill Pond — Mute Swan — Birding — Outdoor Scene — Digital Artwork — Procreate Artwork — Painterly Realism — Impressionism — Digital Painting