This new emu was to replace my original greeting card as it seemed to be one of my most popular and best sellers.

As with all my greeting cards, postcards and bookmarks, once I sell the original artwork I no longer create anymore prints. This way my stock is always changing no mater how popular the artwork is.

With this artwork I was going for an out of focus background, which I still haven’t got the hang of fully yet.

At this stage of the painting the eye looks way to dark but thats just an illusion because it has so much white around it.

This is a strange part of the painting where you look at what’s on the very surface of the emu skin, in the shadows beneath all the feathers. You single out one single colour and make that your base layer, in this case it was blue.

After you do this you just paint from the skin upwards, gradually adding surface textures then painting all the various types of feathers.

After this I worked on the beak and nostrils adding all the groves and scars.

Next I started work on black feathers and more shading around the eye, the only thing I added to the eye was a little white highlights and as you can see it doesn’t look anywhere near dark now.

Once most of the black feathers were painted I started work on the white ones, then gradually build up more black and then white overlapping feathers.

It was a bit of an overcast day when I took most of the photos so they seemed to be a little dull.

As you can see in the final image that I scanned into the computer you get a true indication of the colour and the fine lines that the iPhone doesn’t seem to pick up.

This is not part of my exhibition only because I won’t have time to get it framed but it will make a new greeting card in my next order.