Animal Quilt - Kakapo

The next animal I'm working on is the Kakapo. This endangered little parrot is just too cute and I thought that since he doesn't have a great deal of detail that he would be another good one to start painting. I forgot to take a picture of the line drawing first but believe me you didn't miss anything. It just looked like a fat weird bowling pin shape with eyes and a beak.

This bird is full of greens and yellow. I started with the brightest green color and roughly laying it in avoiding the bright yellow chest and head. Then I added the yellow areas and blending that into the green. Next, I layered some dark green and a greenish brown color to shade some of the beak area. I let this dry for several hours.

Next, I added background colors. This little parrot likes to walk on the forest floor so the background is an abstract of greens and browns. After a while, I thought some leaf shapes would look good peaking in from the sides and so I added those. In the second picture, it looks like I lost a lot of the shapes and so when the second layer dried, I went back in and added more leaves.

I'm thinking of painting some leaves separately and then appliquéing them to the area in front of the bird for a more 3 dimensional look. It's just an idea I'm kicking about but it has potential.

Next, I filled in some facial details really making the face pop. The little cheeks looked like it had some peach in it but I couldn't get the inks to work well. So I mixed red in with some white and a lot of yellow and more white just to get that hint of color.

With some additional white highlights, here's the finished Kakapo. This one came together fairly easily. Hopefully the rest will be too!

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