Having fun painting Barbets

Ever since COVID I've been trying to teach myself watercolour painting. Actually, the first time I tried my hand at painting was in art college - that was a long time ago and at the time I wasn't very good - which is partly why my career headed towards photography!

This is the Red and Yellow Barbet , an African bird, that started my desire to create small bird paintings.

Since I started to dabble in watercolours I've tried painting a number of very different subjects, from Japanese temples, to botanical subjects. I have a lot of bird photos so naturally used them to practice on. This crazy-coloured barbet was copied from one of Natalie's excellent photos. I liked the initial result, not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but good enough to try painting more barbets. There are a lot of barbet species - in Africa, the Americas and across Asia. Barbets are mostly very colourful - making them great subjects to photograph or paint.

Red-and-black bearded Barbet

This is an Acacia Barbet

White-cheeked Barbet

Black-collared Barbet

Great Barbet

Blue-throated Barbet

Fire-tufted Barbet

Coppersmith Barbet

Gold-whiskered Barbet

Scarlet-banded Barbet