Happy Mother's Day (final piece)

This is my gift to my mum for Mothers Day (which is today, in the UK).

The bird featured is : Aegithalos caudatus (Long Tailed Tit)

This nearly, so very nearly, didnt make it to fruition. I had just finished this last night, and was really happy with it, when I knocked a full glass of juice over it. I frantically tried to dry it, only to succeed in, instead, smudging a large stripe of colour right across the picture. I thought it was ruined. I was really upset :( But, I did what I could to dry it, and left it over night swatched in paper towels and weighted down with a cast iron pan stand, in the hope that the paper would warp too badly. This morning, I worked some restorative magic on it, and luckily it seems ok *faints* The paper is a little warped, and if you know where to look you can faintly see the smudge of colour streaked across the picture but its ok. Thank god!!

I would have been really upset to lose this piece!

I obviously wanted to draw something personal to mum, and, we have a massive amount of birds frequenting our garden - maybe a dozen upwards different species daily - due to the fact we put out a lot of food for them. Over winter we have had the wonderful and beautiful spectacle of our birds to wonder at during the days. It was a toss up between drawing for her, our most elusive spotted woodpecker (who is a stunning specimen), or, the long tailed tit, because in the last month, a family of 7 of them have taken up residence nearby and frequently mob our feeder. Its so lovely to see, they are absolutely tiny things, with these wonderful long tails, dark in colour but streaked distinctively with white on the edge... :3

I obviously used references for the bird - several for the anatomy, and to find a nice marking pattern - and for the rest of it, I simply tried to make it bright and appealing. Its obviously not too realistic, I didnt really see the point of trying too hard on this (which would have spoilt it I think) since I'm not so good drawing nature realistically, so this loose sort of realism works better I think. I like it, anyway. I hope my mum does too!

I drew this with a base of markers, and then shaded and textured it with my pencil crayons :D

Anyway! Sorry for the ramble! I wanted to explain my reasoning behind drawing this, and also tell of the almost calamnity!