After my pencil outline I moved on to a detailed undercoat, this gave me the correct tone and colour for the painting.

The next half a day I worked on the beak and the casque, also called a helmet. Yes I had to look that part up, thank you google. Then at 10pm I called it a night but was kept awake thinking about creating this website and a domain name.

The next day the weather was very humid and a warm 31deg’s, that was making painting difficult in a few ways.
First, the small amounts of paint that I have on any brush was drying faster than I could paint, especially anything that was mixed with white.
Secondly, my hands were getting a little sweaty and I had to protect my drawing from my grubby hands, since this style leaves quite a lot of white space around the subjects.

He’s definitely got a grumpy look about him, and thanks to my uncle Merv, now he has a good title, Magnificently Bad Tempered.

The neck was a little more difficult than I was expecting, and this had a lot of re working, by trying not to make it too much like a mosaic.

Also I spent a fair bit of time re working the beak.

Then I painted his, well, err… red neck testicles I guess. May I better ask google about this one too. I stand corrected, they are called fleshy wattles which is not as good description as I gave.

After this I painted multiple layers of dark feathers, that looked like long hair. I also added a little extra colour to the feathers where the sun is shinning.

The next day I found a much better brush for this type of long brush strokes.

I’m very happy with this painting, its now my favourite. It has as much detail as the koala and wombat but much more colour and also extra textures not just fur. It was a pleasure to paint with new challenges.