Having put a coat of white paint on a couple wooden boards that were framed and that used to represent some rather ugly and soulless floral representations, I set to reproduce Hokusai’s ‘Sparrow & Magnolia’.
I sketched it rather precisely, a somewhat tedious endeavour given the texture of the layer of white paint:
Then I started to paint with gouache. Here, the sky and the wood of the magnolia branch:
Then, the sparrow in shades of orange and light milky orange:
Purple and red for the dark petals of the magnolia blossoms:
I added white to my burgundy mix and enhanced the magnolia blossoms. Then used dark and light green for the leaves:
Then I focused on the sparrow, using blue and white, and black:
With a Pentel black brushpen, I outlined everything and creating details on the tail of the sparrow, the branch and leaves.
Here is the resulting 20×50 cm framed painting:
koalie’s contemplations in markup 