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:
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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
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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
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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 🙂
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