Good Afternoon, Gents!!

I think you guys prefer color to just pencil. I don't blame you.

You like progress pics? Some people do, some people just like to see the finished piece. I personally enjoy watching it emerge from an outline to the fiinished piece. Kinda cool.

Just over 14 hours on this one so far. People ask me all kinds of questions about what I'm doing, how I did whatever, why I did whatever, & to be perfectly honest with you, I don't mind the questions, but a lot of the time, I feel like I'm unconscious when I'm doing it. I mean, I'll focus on certain things & there is a plan for certain things, but over 14 hours, stroke by stroke, most of this is automatic.

I lay down a Polychromos (brand name) white, then a Pablo white twice, then a Luminance white twice, & finally another layer of Polychomos white. Pablo applies somewhat smooth (certanly smoother than Polychromos). Luminance applies very smooth. Polychromos is best for blending everything together & burnishing. Every single white patch. Honestly, I haven't counted all of them.

I hate working with white. It's probably my least favorite color. It is beautiful, but just super hard to see & work with & it gets corrupted so easily.

I lay down a layer of white, then a Pablo dark grey (because there's blue in it), then an indigo blue lightly & unevenly (I want to push the blue to the extreme without it actually looking noticably blue), then a cold grey 6, then a Payne's grey, & finally another layer of white to blend everything & burnish it. The burnishing is why people can't tell what medium this is (paint, watercolor, they can't tell & that's on purpose).

I won't bore you with the ochre. But I guess trust the process, the training, the talent, because I can absolutely tell you that while I'm doing this, my mind wanders. Today, I was listening to the football game & Joker ranting (first of all, I pay for the ranting; second of all, thanks for the football stream) & thinking about different things, had a storm roll through & it got dark for a bit, so that required me to focus a little more than normal, but really the few hours I put in on it today just were gone in seconds. Gee, too bad work can't be that way.

This will be a Cooper's Hawk. There is a couple who has been on me all year to make one. We'll see if they buy it when it's finished.

I outlined him & finished the head last weekend, so that was my objective. This weekend, I anticipated finishing about a third of him, which I think that's pretty close. I'd estimate he'll be done by the end of the month or the first week of October, but we'll see.

As always, I appreciate your likes & comments. I won't lie, it's been fun sharing this one with all of you. I haven't ever gone into quite this much detail with you before.