Choosing Feathers for Acrylic Painting

Series Summary

In the bigger picture of the history and legacy of art, Southwestern art is a fairly new medium of expression native to America. Southwestern art is a fusion of Native American Art, Mexican Art, and Cowboy Western Art. With it's start in states like Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, Southwestern art is slowly spreading throughout the rest of North America and has influenced painting, sculpting, and architecture everywhere. Known for its pastel and turquoise colors and its inclusion of furs and feathers, Southwestern art is truly an American original and worth studying and practicing.

In this free video series, watch as artist Carolyn Travisano teaches how to d acrylic painting on feathers. Learn how to choose the feathers, choose brushes, choose paint, how to get inspiration, how to prepare the paint pallet, how to design a layout, how to fill in colors, how to do stage comparisons, how to work the feathers, how to add detail, how to do shadowing, how to do the finishing spray, and how to mount the feathers. This Southwestern art form is unique and diverse and is a great new way to express yourself. Let the experts at ExpertVillage help you get started today!

Video Transcript

"On behalf of Expert Village my name is Carolyn Travisano and I am here to tell you about painting on feathers. So we will begin our demonstration with how I choose the feathers to paint my designs on. And I use basically four different types of feathers. They are turkey, peacock, pheasants and sometimes quail depending on what type of design or portrait or scene that I am doing. So I am just going to pull a few out here for you and I will tell you what they are and why they make the better choice as far as feathers are concerned. I like using the turkey feather. This one is a good example because it gives me a nice wide area to paint on so I can either do a nice scene across the length of it or going across the top we can do a nice portrait or an animal and also because the are a little bit thicker than most feathers as well so they hold the paint a lot nicer. And this is another turkey feather. I believe it's the inner wing and also again I like using this one because it's a thicker feather and wider so it has enough space for a portrait or animal design. And this is an interior peacock feather and we have got a couple of different ones. I love using these because I can do really great long designs across the entire feather and they are nice and thick as well so they hold the paint nicely. And this is a pheasant feather again, great design on the back ground of the feather and also nice and thick and wide for pretty much any design. I like to go ahead at the beginning stage and just do a little design going down the center of the feather on the quill part and for that I use a paint marker. Because it has a waxy film on it, it doesn't really hold the paint that well and it can over time actually chip off. So using the paint marker, this has a like an enamel base so it really adheres to the quill part of the feather. "