Common Tern - Oosterschelde

 

In previous posts I have mentioned our short stay in a vacation home in Kortgene and our walks on the shoreline of the Oosterschelde. We have seen a lot of beautiful views as the landscape is a Natural Reserve but the wildlife is also worth mentioning. We were there in springtime so there were a lot of birds nesting and searching for food. We also saw several birds flying with branches that seemed much too big for such a small bird, but they were up to the challenge.

This common tern was hunting in the water very close to the shoreline. I asked my husband - who had the camera - to make some reference pictures and after about five minutes he had been able to make several beautiful pictures. (I only made pictures with my smartphone and zooming in on a flying tern is not a good idea. The camera is much better for that)

For this watercolour I only made a drawing of the bird, using a watercolour pencil. The sky and the water were painted using the reference pictures as a guideline. I only looked more closely at the reference for the shapes of the waves.

The information about the paper and paints I have used, the size, the price and the availability of this watercolour painting can all be found in my Tumblr blog.