#431 Red-shouldered Hawk #431 Canvas Print

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#431 Red-shouldered Hawk

This is my watercolor painting of a Red-Shouldered Hawk (Buteo lineatus) at the UC Davis Arboretum. At the end of the Arboretum trail, our group was about to take the trail back on the opposite side of Putah Creek. The wind gusts were around 25 miles per hour and it was a chilly winter day. I spotted a Red-Shouldered Hawk sheltering down at the fork of a tree near the trail. He was only about 4 feet above ground level. I kept my distance and shot a few reference photos with my telephoto lens so that I wouldn’t disturb the hawk. To me, that hawk was the highlight of the hike that day.

The red-shouldered hawk is a member of the genus Buteo, a group of medium-sized raptors with robust bodies and broad wings. Members of this genus are known as buzzards in Europe, but hawks in North America. Red-shouldered hawks are forest raptors. In the west, they live in riparian and oak woodlands, and also in eucalyptus groves and some residential...

My search to find my biological family was the genesis of my journey into the world of art. When I finally found my birth family, at the age of 40, I was plunged into a new and very different family. On one occasion while talking with the father I had never known, I discovered that my great uncle was the renowned watercolorist Dong Kingman. Fatefully discovering a cheap watercolor paint set, and intrigued by my relationship with Kingman, I wondered if I had inherited any of his talent. This lingering question spurred me into trying to paint. My first challenge was deciding what subjects I would paint. As a fan of Van Gogh, and knowing that he painted images from his day to day life: houses, fields, people working, I decided to do the...