The Amazing Bird Art of Karl Martens

I had never heard of Karl Martens until a few days ago, but I have since stumbled on to his delightfully exquisite work.

Martens creates beautiful paintings of birds using Japanese and Chinese calligraphy brushes paired with watercolors and charcoal pencil.

These pictures are painted fast, and there is no going back to fix them.

This is art as flow, with intense mastery of not only hand, eye, stroke, color, and technique, but also the biology and form of the birds as well. The pictures are all painted from memory. Unbelievably wonderful stuff.