Original art
Fox Sparrow, ink on scratchboard, copyright David Sibley
Painted Redstart and Bridled Titmouse, gouache on Bristol Board. copyright 2012 David Sibley.
I am currently offering commissioned paintings of the bird of your choice. Click for examples and more info.
A selection of my older work is also available for sale and can be seen at this link. The pieces offered include gouache portraits of birds, many of which were printed in a weekly New York Times syndicated newspaper column from 2002 to 2005. Some were also printed in the book Bright Wings in 2009, as well as in magazine articles, on posters, etc.
Also offered are a number of black-and-white drawings in both pen-and-ink and scratchboard, completed between 1985 and 2001. These were published in a variety of books and magazines.
Please contact me with any questions about commissions or older work.
Prints
Prints of several of my paintings are available. See Prints for sale for more info about these.
How-to…
How to Draw Birds: In fall 2009 I stopped in at the offices of Amazon.com in Seattle, Washington, where I met a couple of young birder/artists and talked about drawing birds. Several short videos from that afternoon are now posted here.
How I paint: Most of my bird paintings are done in gouache (opaque watercolor) on Strathmore Bristol Board, and over the years I’ve developed a style involving transparent/translucent layers of paint to represent the colors and textures of birds. A slideshow showing one painting from start to finish can be found at this post.
Gallery of some recent work
Shoot – I must be doing something wrong. I can find no site listed
as “sibleyart” and this so-called gallery is very disappointing. Not
only are there just a smattering of examples, but they are too small
to get any idea of their quality. Considering the spectacular wealth
of paintings in the Sibley Guide, I don’t get this site. I’ve been
painting birds for sixty years and I love your opaque wc works, and
am even emulating the technique with oil on paper, but this is just
a major-league bummer. Regards, Rick
Rick,
Thanks for the comments. I’ve been working on a number of things to post here, and just got one of them up. I hope to have a few more essays, and a sampler of my work, posted in the next month or two.