I knew that this was probably going to be one of my last paintings for my beaks, claws and paws exhibition and I wanted to paint something special.

I’ve really started to enjoy painting branches, and this broken one was no exception. It had different textures and some really nice shadows so this is where I started my painting.

The next important feature was the birds red head and crest feathers. I like them but I don’t think I have captured the wind that was blowing from behind the bird. I think this may have needed some leaves floating past the birds head to give the effect of wind.

A few more tiny adjustments to the head feathers and this is where I packed up for the night. I also left the comfort of mums bed and breakfast and started back on the road camping once again.

Not having the comfort of a house to paint in I was extremely cautious of painting out doors.
This is when I decided I needed to test the water and paint something else outside first, that was the fiddler crab in my previous blog.

I started filling in the feathers on the wings with different shades of blue and greys. I really didn’t want to use a large colour pallet but I still wanted to make the feathers look like they had a nice sheen on them.
This is where adding blue to grey really makes them pop.

The weather was very windy which made painting outdoors quite difficult and people loved to stop by and have a chat, which I really enjoyed. I think this photo is a few days worth of work with all the distractions I forgot to take progress photos.

The last thing was to finish painting all the feathers, then take a close look at them as a whole and blend them accordingly.

A few more shadows added under the bird wing and neck feathers completed the picture.

I’m very pleased with this panting as it was very challenging painting outdoors.