New attempts (Zone Tailed Hawk)

Recently, I've borrowed a few books on watercolors, and this one by Anne Blockley, called Watercolor Textures kind of sparked my interest in looking into the subtley abstract sort of painting. I've been telling myself to break away from the usual way of painting and drawing, but all these while, it's hard to change old habits. (Which probably had stopped me many times from enjoying art-making....) I went to flip those picture books and decided on painting this Zone Tailed Hawk (from a 'birds of prey' book).



It started off with a question mark, not knowing what colors to use, but I really wanted to emphasize the beak and the gleam in the eye, so decided maybe i'll just play along with the paints and see how things go. Added some salt in the backgroud, some splatter of paints here and there, gouache to lighten the dark and flat surface. The painting process was pretty fast, and after about 3 hours this came out:



Was quite happy with the fact that I could finally bring myself to do some messy random work instead of trying to duplicate the picture as it is. (yea, realised I have no patience for that anyways... which turned me off from the fine arty when I forced myself to.) Still raw at this, but hopefully, I will continue exploring with this medium :)