• 

Here is a painting I created of a Wild Turkey at our Bird Feeder. This painting was created from a photo I took in 2020. This painting measures 20″x16″ and was created on one of my better Appolon Canvases

The Interesting thing about this scene is that the Turkey just casually waddled up to the bird feeder and started eating.

• 

Here is the original photo I used to create the painting.

These are the rough drawings I created before starting the painting. The first one is done in Pitt Pastel Pencils, and the second one was a quick watercolour painting, and the third one was Polycromos Coloured Pencils in a toned sketchbook.

• 

• 

• 

The first step in the painting was creating a drawing on paper which I later transfered to the canvas by putting graphite on the back of the paper and pressing it into the canvas.

• 

The image below is the first photo taken of the painting after 4.5 hours working on it. You can see I blocked in the main colour areas and have colour where the trees and branches are, but at the same time, you can clearly see that the painting is not done. The bird looks flat and overall the painting looks very blotchy.

• 

The image below is the second photo taken of the painting, after around 11 hours of working on it. You can see that there is more detail. In this version, I added many transparent glazes and built up many layers to create depth. One other thing I did in this version was make the head of the Turkey thicker, since something looked off with the head in the previous version.

• 

Here is the final version of the painting, in this version, I added more depth, and more transparent glazes in the bird. I also added glazes of mixing white in the trees to create the illusion of sun beams. One other thing I did in this version was to add very thin glazes of the primary colours, quinacrodone magenta, lemon yellow and phatlo blue to white background of the painting to make it pop. Some of the colours I used in creating this painting were Paynes Grey, Raw Umber, Green Gold, Golden Orange, Chrome Oxide Green, Titanium White, and Zinc Mixing White.

• 

This painting took a total of 16 hours to complete, and overall, I am very satisfied with how it turned out. One area where I might have been able to improve with this painting might have been to add more detail in the feathers of the bird.