Paint the legs and lower arms quickly and carefully with gray. You paint quickly so you can make them one solid value and carefully so you don't go out of the lines or leave brush marks.

Now put 15 brush loads of water in another section of the picnic plate with a tiny touch of blue for the wings. Test it on the paper to make sure it is even paler than the gray.

Paint all the feathers with the pale blue and between the feathers on the first two rows.

Now use the same blue paint to paint shadows on the long wing muscle and the bottom of each feather. When you paint with the same color it looks creates a darker value and looks like a shadow.

Now that the legs are dry add a touch more black to the gray and test it on the scratch sheet where you tested the gray before. We want the shadows on the legs to be more noticeable than the ones on the wings.

THE ART POEM