Creating A Series

When it's time to paint something new, it's helpful to have a strategy before tackling a difficult challenge on a large canvas. For this project, my goal was to paint a bald eagle with an interesting background, on a medium to large canvas. Because I hadn't painted a bald eagle before, and they are very particular with the white head and stern face, I wanted to practice small. I made these three 8x8" canvases to practice, but also to have as finished works of art in their own right. I love how they turned out. I used pieces of ripped paper in the backgrounds, then acrylic paint with stencil patterns. And painted the birds in acrylic paint as the feature. 

Once I got my confidence up with the smaller pieces, I was ready to try my larger canvas. I created this fairly quickly, as I was in the "bald eagle zone" already! This painting is fully acrylic, no papers at all, but has a similar feel. 
​Resilience 18x24" has already been juried into a show!