A peacock for my friend Kelly.

She likes birds and she's a very imaginative person, so this is a kind of fantasy bird for her birthday.

This is all watercolour, just a little bit fixed up in photoshop afterwards. I did not have a scanner this time, so instead I took pictures during the process.  

I started with just a very faint pencil line, then began painting with the watercolour pretty straight onto the paper. It's a thick (300g) Aquarelle Arches, so it can take a lot of water even if it's dry to start with. 

Putting in the colours and starting to think about shape and shadows.

Here I put in the extra thing on the right side. The balance didn't feel right, and since it's an original piece meant to stand by it self I needed it to feel right on the paper. Kind of a weird solution, but it also added a litte flatness to the background that I liked.

Close up before I started spatter colour all over the background. I made a very crude mask out of the ooriginal sketch to cover the bird and then just spattered away :)

So here is a close up of the face. After this I put on gold leaf on the crown and sprinkeled it in the background, but the gold doesn't photograph that well.