I don’t know why this was a bird-heavy week but it was. I started off trying to continue practicing colours – the watermelon and lemon being a poor attempt at layering contrasting colours to create a shadow. After a bit though my focus wandered and I remembered an exercise I saw to practice brush strokes: these little penguins. This was a lot of fun. Not only did I practice my brush stroke, but I also had to practice controlling how much paint was on the brush and how much I wanted it to blend. The little baby one was one I attempted by looking at a reference photo. He’s funky but that’s fine. I also was inspired to paint a fox (for whatever reason). This I had no tutorial for and just looked at photos of foxes. Once again my failure to be patient won over and I added the black details well before the orange had dried. Oops. Oh well. We live and learn. Other than that he’s cute. I like the tail part.

After painting the penguins I returned to painting little buildings. I wanted to try something more colourful than last time. This was a great warm-up and definitely something I will be continuing.

I was on a bird high. Maybe it’s the returning spring and warmer weather but I was just itching to paint some birds. I followed this tutorial to start and then for the bluebird and the robin I looked at reference photos of the real birds and tried to replicate them using the skills I had learned. I love them.