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PART TWO: PAINTING & HABITAT
This article if part of a two-part series. Catch up on Part One right here.
In this second part of the goshawk demonstration, I’ll cover how I painted the goshawk, created the habitat attached to the base, and mounted the sculpture to the base for display.
I call this piece Ghost of the Forest. Goshawks are superbly adapted forest birds; they are usually very secretive and incredibly agile flyers. For my sculpture, I wanted to add enough leaves to imply that the bird is looking out from a tree while being camouflaged by its leaves. I chose to use maple leaves on some small branches that surround the bird on the base. I worked with Josh Walters from Windy Cape Studios to manufacture the base that I designed. I wanted something with a burl side where I could attach the branches, and I wanted a triangular-shaped base with a bit of a curve to it to mirror the profile of the goshawk.
The goshawk is relatively easy to paint as there are just a few colors needed. An American goshawk has much lighter barring on the neck and breast than its European counterpart. Overall, the bird is blue/gray with a white-barred breast and underside.
Materials & Tools
- Black gesso
- White gesso
- Several brushes, including a #1 liner brush
- Sanding sealer
- Brass rod in several sizes
- Brass tubing in several sizes
- Thin sheet brass
- A+B Epoxy putty
- Propane torch
- Soldering gun
- Solder
- Holding jig
- Scribing tool
- Gray metal primer spray paint
- Flat metal file
- 5-minute epoxy
- DecoArt Glazing Medium
- Wooden base
- Foredom shaft tool
- Cushioned sanding drums
Paints
I used Jo Sonja’s acrylics in the following colors:
- Titanium white
- Unbleached titanium white
- Payne’s gray
- Raw umber
- Burnt umber
- Cadmium yellow medium
- Yellow light
- Cadmium red medium
- Sap green
- Quinacridone violet
- Carbon black
Painting The Goshawk
1. I began the painting process by applying sanding sealer to the entire bust. I used two coats and let them dry thoroughly before applying the gesso. I used both black and white gesso on the bird. I applied several thinned coats of black on the dark areas of the bird and several thinned coats of white on the underside/breast. With my last coat of black gesso, I added a small amount of burnt umber to give the black color a bit of brown tint.
2. I created a 50/50 mix of burnt umber and Payne’s gray and washed the top of the head with this color. The top of the head will be more black than blue-gray when we are done. I mixed one part Payne’s gray and two parts raw umber and began washing the nape and the tops of the wings and coverts. This area of the bird will ultimately show more of a gray/blue color.
3. I kept darkening the colors with additional washes. The supercilia on adult goshawks vary widely. I washed this area with titanium white to get a pure-white stripe. I added the darker quills later using the base color with a liner brush.
4. In these photos, you can see the darker values of those base colors. I began adding washes of titanium white on the neck and breast and bled the white to the blue-gray in the cheeks and neck transition areas. I added some cadmium yellow light to the cere and gape of the beak. For the beak, I used one part Payne’s gray and two parts unbleached titanium for the mandibles. I blended that to the dark part of the beak, which is equal parts burnt umber and Payne’s gray.
5. At this point, most of the base colors were as dark as I wanted them to appear for the final look. I washed the wings with a very thin coat of the base color and a bit of raw umber to allow a brown color to show through. I’ve blended the cheeks and supercilia to ready them for the barring and quills. I deepened the cere with some cadmium yellow medium and added some of the same yellow to the corners of the gape.
6. Note the blacker color with brown coming through on the top of the head, nape, and upper back.
7. Next, I brought the white color for the neck and breast to the depth I wanted before I applied the barring and quills.
8. I began adding quill lines and some darker barring on the cheeks and a few quills on the supercilium areas. I’m using the base color of Payne’s gray and burnt umber for the quills.
9. I carried the quills under the chin, adding them in a random pattern. I also started the thin barring on the underside of the beak and neck. I used the liner brush to carry the long facial feathers into the beak area. This was done with the base color and titanium white. I used the liner brush for the barring on the chin, neck, and upper breast.
10. I continued this barring all the way down to the base of the carving, adding a few random dark quills, and varied the intensity of the barring, with some areas having darker barring and others having the base color thinned for lighter barring.
11. I’ve finished blending the colors of the mandibles and the beak. I put a light wash of white over the cere to tone down the yellow. I finished the beak with a couple of washes of DecoArt Glazing Medium (Thanks, Laurie McNeil!) to add just the right amount of shine.
12. To complete the painting process, I touched up the long facial feathers that extend across the cere and beak and added some dashes of the base color to the eye rings. I also added a couple of thin, watery washes of titanium white to small random areas of the breast. I used a few thin washes of raw umber on the cape and back in the deeper areas of the textured feathers. The back of the bust was painted with several coats of black gesso. Once this was dry, I put the bird aside and started working on the base and habitat.
Creating the Habitat
13. I used brass sheet, brass rod, and brass tubing to create the leaves and branches for the habitat. I decided I wanted one branch that would spread out over the back to come up out of the burl on the back of the base. I attached the leaves to the branches in a design that “framed” the bust. I followed the same process that I described in my previous demonstration on the forty-spotted pardalote. (See 40 Spots for 40 years in the Winter 2026 issue of WCM.):
• Cut out the maple-leaf pattern from the brass sheet.
• Sand the edges using a sanding drum on the Foredom.
• Use a scribing tool to indent veins into the leaves.
• Solder the leaves to the brass stems using my holding jig.
• Solder the stems to the branches.
14. I intentionally carved a cleft into the lowest breast area of the bird, knowing that I wanted to have that space as the attach point to the top of the base.
15. The base I received from Windy Cape Studios had a perfect peak that fit into the cleft of the bird. I needed to remove a small portion of the point at the top where I could insert the pin that would attach the bust to the base. I used a brass rod and a brass tube to create the pin and the sleeve for attaching the bird. I filed a flat spot on the brass rod so that the sleeve wouldn’t rotate. I then cut the corresponding sleeve from the tube, slipped it over the brass rod, and hammered it over the flat spot. I now had a matching sleeve and rod for mounting the bird to the base.
16. I sawed off the tip of the base, drilled a hole with my Ram and a diamond bit, and inserted the brass rod that I shaped. I oriented the flat spot toward the back of the base and used 5-minute epoxy to glue it into place.
17. On the bottom of the bust, I drilled a hole to receive the brass sleeve. I ground around the hole to ensure that when the bird was set on the base, the pin and sleeve were oriented correctly and invisible. I then epoxied the sleeve in place, and while the epoxy was setting up, I made sure the bird was facing the right direction. Once the epoxy had cured completely, I touched up the back of the carving with black gesso.
18. I covered the brass branches with A+B Epoxy putty and let that cure.
19. I inserted the leaves into the branches and arranged them in a shape that somewhat circles the head of the bird. I had soldered a brass pin into the base of the branch and made a corresponding hole in the base so that the branch could be set in place.
20. I again placed the bust on the base to ensure that the angle and alignment were exactly what I wanted to present.
21. I left a few of the small branches bare, and I formed one so that when the main branch was attached to the base, the bare branch touched the back of the bust. Where they met, I drilled a small hole in the back of the bust so that, ultimately, the bird is supported by both the pin in the top of the base and the small branch in the hole in the back of the bust.
22. I used gray metal primer spray to cover the leaves before I painted them. I sanded the epoxied branch with a cushioned drum bit and then textured the branches with my Ram micro motor and some diamond burs to give the branch a “wooden bark” texture. I painted the lower branches with raw umber, burnt umber, and titanium white to get a gray-brown color. I added a bit of the green to give a hint of mossy color to the main branch. I painted the lowest small leaf with cadmium red medium and a touch of quinacridone violet. I washed the leaf several times with this mixture until I got a red color that was close to the eye color of the goshawk. As I moved up the branch, I changed the branch color to a dark gray and then a light-gray mix. My idea here was that as the viewer’s eyes move up the piece from the lowest part of the base to the top, and as they move in closer to the bird, the colors become more muted until they are “ghostly” gray closest to the bird itself. I painted the outside edges of the upper leaves with washes of yellow, green, and red. I wanted the rest of the leaves to be pale gray.
23. This photo shows the final color washes on the leaves: the dark red on the lowest leaf and the washed-out colors of the upper leaves as you move in closer to the carving itself. The red on the lowest leaf hints at the red eye of the goshawk in the upper part of the sculpture. The curved shape of the base mirrors the curve of the neck and beak of the bird. I epoxied the branch to the base using the brass pin I created.
24. I mounted the goshawk bust on the base and shaped the stems of the leaves until I found a form that “wreathed” the bird. For shipping or transporting, the bust can be removed from the base by slipping the small branch out of the hole in the back and lifting the sleeve off the pin on the top of the base.