Strong of the dog confidence boost, I attempted my spirit animal (lol).

This meant stepping up the game, and it was the first time I started my love/hate relationship with painting. See how it got started – I picked a nice image source, with good contrast and a “proud” eagle.

First drawings were on a black background – this time I was motivated to leverage it:

I then used oil painting on top, which was especially challenging as the background alters their value and you need to add extra brightness to come out of it

After several weeks fighting against it, tempted to give up, I managed to reach a level I was partially happy with, after patiently painting each feather multiple times. I loved the beak but the whiteness of the feather wasn’t where I wanted it

Eventually I increased the contrast of the beak and its eye to make it piercing like in real life, and carefully – one by one – revisited the feather. The difficult part was achieving the shading under its beak, using a whitened blue, if that makes sense – and many small patient strokes. It left me so tired, though proud. This is now imposing its presence in my bedroom 🙂