Shake Your Tail Feathers: Bird Painting by kto ART

Shake Your Tail Feathers: Peacock showing off his feather display

Yea, this one took longer than one day. More like a month... But I love how it turned out. Sometimes I get an idea stuck in my head and the only way to put my mind at ease is to transform that idea into a painting. In my head, this painting would be relatively easy... Laborious but simple in design. When concept evolved into practice, however, easy was out the door and a big ole mess of difficult took its place. I painted dark feathers first, then some green, then realized that didn't look right and washed a background color over all that work. Starting over basically, I brought back some dark feathers again, then some highlights and kept layering colors and tones until it seemed to be working out. With troublesome paintings such as this one, I usually start off detesting the whole thing and forcing myself to work through it. Then one day I look at it and think, "it looks pretty good!" And that's when it becomes fun. Kind of like a book that starts off super slow and you think, "why did they say this was a must read?" But you read on because your friend said it changed her life and all of a sudden after page 56, you can't put it down. Painting is sometimes like that, present painting included. Now I will miss the back and forth between peacock and me. But just like another amazing book, there's another painting around the bend.