Part 7: G - Gouldian Finch

Hello! Welcome to the 7th instalment of the Alphabet Superset project I’m undertaking. I am a few weeks behind in the project, and a couple of weeks behind in the blog posts, but, I have caught up a bit and am still chugging along and excited about this project and the animals on my list, so here is week 7! If this is your first time here and you have no idea what the Alphabet Superset Project is or why this is week 7, the first post in the series might help. But also, here is a quick recap:

Every week since the first week of September I have been painting an Australian animal or an animal that visits Australia that I’ve seen and preferably one I have my own photos of (or Scott has photos of). As mentioned, I am a few weeks behind (this should be K week, but I’ve only just completed H, which I’ll post about soon). I will continue doing this until April 2024 or when I finish as part of a project/challenge called the Alphabet Superset, the brainchild of Youtuber (among other things) Campbell Walker aka Struthless.

Each week I am painting a different animal according to the letter assigned that week following alphabetical order i.e. week 1= A, week 2= B, week 3= C etc. However, I’m not too bothered about keeping it to every week at the moment. Some weeks I’m able to get more in, and in other weeks well there are a ton of other life priorities to prioritise.

My main reasons are to have a consistent means of slowly painting all the wonderful animals I’ve been lucky to see while we’d been camping around Australia in 2021 and 2022 (with a short stint in Darwin) and on other little walks and nature excursions.

To find out more about the project, the best source is the Alphabet Superset page itself or Campbell Walker’s video about it. To see more of my paintings as part of this challenge and my progress, you can search for Alphabet Superset on this site or click on the Alphabet Superset category here or above.

Now, here’s part 7: Gouldian Finches

What are Gouldian Finches?

Gouldian finches (Erythrura gouldiae) are a beautiful, and sadly endangered bird. They look, in shape like most other finches, but their colouring is extremely distinctive. The Australian Bird Guide describes them as unmistakable, and it is right. There are three different types of face colouring. Some have black faces, some red, and the yellow-faced morph is rare. We did not see any yellow-faced finches, just the red and black.

Adding to this distinctive face colouring Gouldian finches sport purple breasts, yellow bellies, a turquoise/bright blue strip around the black bit on their face, pale blue near their black tails, and a bright green colouring on the rest of their bodies. They really hit the colour lottery! Females have the same colouring but are duller, but juveniles look a washed out olive-green and can look like other small birds from afar.

Their traditional range is in the north of Western Australia, the north of the Northern Territory and in parts of the Cape York peninsula however their populations have declined throughout their range.

References and for a bit more information about the Gouldian Finch:

• The Australian Bird Guide, 2019 revised edition, CSIRO Publishing, (click here for my blog post about the bird guide)

• Gouldian Finch - The Australian Museum

Where had we seen them?

We’ve only ever seen the Gouldian finch once - at Lee Point in Darwin. We specifically went to the Lee Point campground before heading out of Darwin last year because we’d heard that a sizeable number of the Gouldian finches had been seen around Lee Point (prior to 2022, they were seldom seen around Darwin, and, being endangered, are notoriously elusive).

We were so excited to actually see them (and hundreds of other finches)! It is an iconic bird, and we were honestly so chuffed to see so many of them at the water sprinklers of the Lee Point Caravan Park.

Sadly, few have been spotted since recent fires in the area. Additionally, Lee Point had been approved for development for Defence Housing, and despite the finches, opposition and protests, development has continued albeit with alterations to protect a waterhole where the finches have been seen.

This still destroys much of the habitat of Lee Point and has devastated those who were campaigning to save this lovely patch of nature in Darwin’s urban sprawl. It saddens me immensely as well. For endangered birds to have come here, only to then face another threat is just depressing. That was often the bittersweet feeling as we were travelling around Australia and seeing wonderful creatures as well as places. While we were happy to be able to see what we saw, many places also left me with a touch of sadness for what had been lost or would soon be lost.

If you’re interested in knowing more about the Lee Point, the finches there and the development, here are a few links:

• Gouldian Finch Irruption at Lee Point - Save Lee Point

• Endangered Gouldian finch returns to Lee Point, prompting campaign to stop Defence Housing Australia development - ABC News

• Federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek approves Defence Housing Australia project at Lee Point - ABC News

• HOME - Save Lee Point

Why Paint them?

There weren’t a ton of options I was excited about for G week, so I went with what I felt like painting even though I’d already done a small gouache painting of one in 2022.

This time, instead of a relative close-up of a finch, I wanted to try to capture the image of a number of these colourful finches in the swaying grasses near the caravan park.

Seeing the Gouldian Finches was honestly among the highlights of our wildlife encounters in the last few years, so painting them again was a no-brainer.

Process - Part 1: Find Photo References, Sketch

The best reference photos I had were all thanks to Scott. I didn’t take too many photos of the birds myself but my videos helped me in working out what I wanted to capture, and I knew Scott would be taking a ton of photos.

Deciding on the background was easy once I knew what I wanted to paint. The background would just be clear sky, though I do like a textured streaky wispy cloud sky so allowed the brush strokes to mix the paint on the page rather than mixing up the perfect shade of blue in the palette.

Seeing as I started with a clear picture of what I wanted to paint, all I had to do was refine it a bit. I used Procreate on the iPad to sketch this one out.

Process - Part 2: Work out Colours, Paint the Background, Start Painting

As with the previous few weeks, the majority of the colours I used in this painting were Holbein Irodori Artists’ Gouache colours.

For the Background Sky:

• Shinbashi/Geisha Blue (Holbein Irodori Artists' Gouache)

• Primary White (Holbein Artists’ Gouache)

Grass/Reeds:

• Oudo/Light Ochre (Holbein Artists’ Gouache) mixed with miscellaneous browns on my palette

• Primary White (Holbein Artists’ Gouache)

Gouldian Finches

• Primary Black (Holbein Artists’ Gouache) (already on the palette)

• Cobalt Turquoise (Holbein Artists’ Gouache)

• Moegi/Leek Green (Holbein Irodori Artists' Gouache) and other green mixtures on my palette

• Primary Yellow (Holbein Artists’ Gouache)

• Kuchinashi/Gardenia Yellow (Holbein Irodori Artists’ Gouache)

• Primary Magenta (Holbein Artists’ Gouache)

• Zinc White (Holbein Artists’ Gouache)

Once I’d painted the background, I added in the reeds/grasses. I did this bit as I went, using the sketch in Procreate as a guide rather than a specific plan of where everything should be. This was a fun process especially with my new Princeton 20/0 Liner. Honestly, as someone who paints small, I don’t know how I didn’t come across this and other Princeton Velvetouch brushes before.

Process - Part 3: Adding the Finches, Adjusting as I go

While there wasn’t a ton of detail to worry about it this one, I hadn’t quite realised how small I’d have to make these finches for the scale to work. To be able to paint these finches, the only brushes I used were my Micador for Artists 00 brush and the Princeton 5/0 spotter. Everything else I had would have been too big. I even had to bust out my magnifying glass to help me see where I was painting!

Process - Part 4: Refine, Refine, Refine

This part didn’t take long this time. Once the finches were blocked in, it was just a matter of getting all the colours on their bodies in the right places. It was finicky, but unlike some previous paintings, not that time-consuming.

And here is my Gouldian Finch piece finished!

Lessons Learnt & Thing I Might Try Going Forward

1. Check the actual size of small things you need to paint before deciding on a scale/composition. I’d not dealt with this issue before, and while I do love to paint small, I probably should have tried a composition that allowed these finches to be bigger. That said, I’m not sure, because I’m quite happy with the final painting - the effect is exactly as I hoped it would be, capturing the tiny, colourful birds amongst a sea of swaying grasses/reeds.

2. I’m still really enjoying the style this series is slowly bringing out for me.

3. Similarly to last week, while I absolutely love gouache, I couldn’t help thinking about how much easier it might have been to be able to work on this digitally. It would have allowed me to paint the birds as I wanted, then resize and orient them as necessary. Everything about the process of painting with gouache is so enjoyable for me. From picking up the brush and using some lovely gooey gouache to seeing those gorgeous matte colours on the page, it all just brings out a child-like joy, but I also keep coming back to a desire to explore digital drawing and painting more.

Next: H- Humpback Whales

I’ve been looking forward to this one too! Scott and I have both seen Humpback Whales in Australia, and they’re a regular visitor, but we didn’t see them on our trip together around Australia. So, departing from the previous paintings where we’d seen the animals I painted recently, and in Australia, for good photos this one, I went back to our trip to Vava’u in Tonga in 2018 where we were swam with these giant, gentle creatures.