“Preening” was started as a rather small (for me) canvas 24×24″. My senior students wanted to have a class on birds so we all did similar subjects as I painted the tutorial and they followed along with me. Again, I wanted to leave modern, gestural brush strokes and not try to go for realism. Many layers of different gold acrylic paints were used in the background as well as several coats of glazes of transparent colors like red iron oxide. This photo does not reflect the metallic golds…which shine.
