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As blossom emerges and birds begin to prepare their nests for the breeding season ahead, my weekly choice of paintings reflect the mood of hope in the air. Keep checking in each week for a new painting to reflect the season.
Click here to look back at my wildlife painting of the week winter choices.
I enjoyed mixing the brilliant blue and green paints onto my palette for this painting. Kingfishers are like jewels and I wanted to get across the way they light up the countryside. This painting was inspired by an incredible experience watching a pair throughout their fascinating courtship process and then – via a specially adapted hide – seeing them lay their eggs underground.
Click here to read more about how I watched kingfishers inside their nest.
This week is Hedgehog Awareness Week. It is incredible to think that these once-common creatures now face extinction. You can do your bit to help by leaving a wild area for them to shelter and opening a small gap in garden fences so that they can roam safely. These prickly creatures are so lovable. I painted this small hoglet after rescuing it from a trap in my garden.
Click here to read more about how I persuaded it to pose for its portrait.
Today is May Day so I am posting this print from my painting of a yellowhammer perched on May blossom. May blossom, or May thorn, is the common name for hawthorn, the white flowers foaming over countryside hedgerows in late spring. Listen out for yellowhammers singing from the tops of trees and bushes at this time of year. Their song sounds like they are saying: “A little bit of butter and no cheeeese.”
Listen to it on the following short video of bird song:
I’ve been studying a family of stoats in my garden with something of an obsession. My take on this five-year focus on these common, but little-known, mammals features in BBC Wildlife Magazine this month. This is one of the paintings I produced following this extensive study. Click here to read the article in BBC Wildlife and find out about how I followed six generations of stoats. Also see my photographs and a ‘family tree’ of the individual stoats living in my garden.
I used acrylic and pencil for this lapwing chick. My painting follows the moment I actually watched this chick emerge from its egg! A perfect painting to share with you in time for Easter. And the story is interesting too. I was watching the mother lapwing nesting on a set-aside field in East Yorkshire and was so privileged to witness this moment. Click here to read the full story.
Fox cubs begin emerging from their underground dens at this time of year. Look out for discarded bones and other ‘toys’ around an earth for signs that there are cubs now. I painted this after watching a vixen with her three playful cubs living underneath a Wendy House in a suburban garden. Click here to read the full story.
Kingfishers are courting now. Normally solitary birds they have to overcome an instinctual aversion of each other to mate. The male will fish for the female and then offer her his catch as a gift. To tell the difference between males and females, look for a line of orange on the lower beak of the female, like a streak of lipstick. I painted this after building a kingfisher nest rigged with hidden cameras so that I could see the chicks hatch inside their nest.
The cherry trees are bursting with blossom and the birds have begun to sing in the season so I thought to pose a singing wren on this branch was the perfect composition from spring.
A grey heron is a beautiful subject to paint. It always strikes an elegant pose and its long graceful neck and black, white and grey plumage offer such fluid lines. Look out for herons now in huge communal nests known as heronries.
Click here to read about my experiences watching herons at an ancient heronry.
It was the way the sweeping curve of one bird’s beak echoed the round of its mate’s belly that caught my eye when I chose to paint this scene. Avocets are so graceful to paint. I love the symmetry of their black and white plumage. Here I have set these lines against a simple backdrop of blue water fading into the blue of the sky.
Did you know that avocets are the symbol of the RSPB because saving these beautiful birds from extinction was this organisation’s first success story? Click here to read more.
This beautiful slate-blue bird gets its name for is fondness for nuts, which it holds in its claws and carefully chisels open. The ‘hatch’ comes from the old French word ‘hache’ meaning axe or hatchet. But you are more likely to see them scurry down tree trunks in search of insects. I used oils to pick out the beautiful blue of its feathers.
Click here for a weekly selection of the photographs behind my paintings: Wildlife Photo Of The Week
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AS SEEN IN
THE ROBERT FULLER GALLERY
FOTHERDALE FARM
THIXENDALE, MALTON
YO17 9LS
UNITED KINGDOM
TEL: +44 (0) 1759 368355
EMAIL: mail@robertefuller.com
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