A large part of my project has been photographing and painting the local birds. Sometimes, as was the case with the wood ducks, I get very acquainted with the subject, and other times, I catch a lucky shot of a bird as it moves by, never to be seen again. I’ve been experimenting with different approaches — sometimes I make the bird the main focus, and have a plain background, and other times I stylize the background (see the painting of ruby-crowned kinglet). I think that the stylized ruby-crowned kinglet is my most successful painting among the ones in this post. Moving forward I will try to approach paintings in a similar way. Another thing I have been trying to do is use as big a brush as I possibly can for as most of the painting as I possibly can. I then move in with my smallest brush for the details. My hope is that this creates a space for the eye to move on the bird. I can definitely feel myself getting a lot better at rendering these little birds, and am excited to do paintings of the various warblers that are migrating through right now.