Diane

I enjoyed what became my singular focus on drawing this bird & kept returning to the page to “fix” this or that until it was almost edited out of existence. Tried the color pencils & my poor bird wanted to fly away from them so stopped before I ruined it and lose the sense of pleasure at working on it at all. Working from a photo made it easier because the visual angle stayed the same. I could back again and again to change a line or correct a bit of shading to satisfy my eye. Almost got myself in trouble by enlarging it and seeing the delicate feathering but after trying to capture that, decided to stick with one focus because that would likely be closer to the actual field experience. I agree with another nature journalist here that I get too hung up on my version of “perfection” and need to let that go!