Robin Bird in Oregon Forest

This acrylic painting of a robin in the Oregon woods is second in my 30-day personal challenge to become a better painter.    It came together pretty well, and I'm happy with it.  I see a couple of small flaws that I'll probably go back in sometime and fix (as in if someone buys the original!), but for the most part I feel it came out well.  I was able to focus on the important big matters in the painting instead of getting all tied up in tiny, minute details. In other words, I didn't paint every single feather, which has often been my tendency.

Okay, off to paint the third one.  I don't even know what it will be yet; but since several people have submitted photos that I can use in paintings, I better get started on one of those!

Oh, my! I'm working with oils!

Well, I finally decided to give oils a try.  I know; I've talked about it for a long time.  They look so appealing, what with their staying moist forever, their thickness, their SMELL!  I've been working on two little paintings over the past two days, and I think it's finally time to take a break from them because they're getting a bit muddy.
I generally don't show paintings in progress, but I will this time.  The lighting is very poor, and obviously, the background on one of them especially needs a lot,lot, lot of work.  I did the backgrounds only in acrylic, but I really messed up on the dragonfly one and just decided to fix it up after I did the subject (a bad, bad idea, by the way, because now I'm going to have to work around the oil because, as everyone knows, oil can go over acrylic but never the reverse).

 This bird, when it's finished, is just a head study I decided to try (less intimidating than dogs in a big way).  It's called a yellow-breasted chat.

Plus, I must branch out, so to speak, and do some landscapes (tree branches, get it?) and other subjects besides just pets.  I need it.  So I'm not only starting to switch over to oils (the water-miscible kind, by the way, which is a whole other story) but starting to do paintings of subjects other than pets.

The dragonfly I think will not be too bad when I get the background fixed and get more transparency into the insect's wings.  But again, I'm going to have to - very carefully, obviously, work just the tiniest bit into the space between the wings on the right with some background.  I accidentally ran the two wings together and made them too wide at their base.

Anyway, it's winter and nasty once again here in Oregon (we had a nice sunny break for a while), so it's a good time to try something new and get out of the winter rut.