Pueo

Starting in on the face as per usual. Thinking it's pretty important to block in the shadows and already knowing I'm going to have to pain over the sketch on this one or my lighter colors will never show up...

The disembodied face was a little hard to look at critically so I put in some rough colors on the rest of the head. Calling it a night!

More color correction and a really rough attempt at the wing but not happy with it at this point...

Another big push. Trying to make the wing less abrasive to the eyes by blending and muting colors. Got some depth in there with the longer primaries now and things are looking up!

After some debate I decided to nix the leg and recenter the tail. The leg's odd pose wasn't working for me and I needed to wrap this up.

Golden Plover

Another initially super frustrating one.

  

Blocking in rough colors and not happy with the way the yellow's looking. Tempting to call it 'sickly' :P

All I did was bump up the white on a separate layer to stop the poor thing looking diseased.

Finally got annoyed with the color scheme so saved it as a jpg and did some color correction... Bumped up the reds toned down the yellows. Started filling in some wing detail.

Kalij Pheasant

Man this thing is fighting me the entire way through the painting phase :/ I really like the sketch but the colors aren't meshing and the feather details are extremely difficult....

I always flip sketches over in PS to check for glaring errors. Looked OK so started to block in some of the black and work on the face detail. I rapidly found out the crest was going to be a pain so I left it with base colors....

Some more work. The black breast is much too black and I tried the white streaking at least 5 times but it never looked anything other than flimsy barring.. :/ This is going to be a pain. Frustrated break time.

Trying to do the wing and still struggling with the lighting and the feathers... Ugh.

The long tail feathers are looking solid but the primaries and tail coverts need some love. Still unsure how to detail the black underparts :/

Minor update- the red was becoming overbearing so color corrected for that and started on the feet.

Calling it quits for now.

Fox

Working on some fur practice.

The most important thing I've learned so far is to not be shy with base colors. Don't add color via individual hair layering- get the base colors down heavily before going in with hair details and highlights rather than working the color up gradually.

Struggling along with the black on the face. The mouth needs more detailing but I think the face black is looking OK.

Iguana

Iguana process. Didn't take too many screen caps but here's what I saved. 

Base colors are added in to the face. I do the eye so I know how much detail I want in the head (and to make sure I get his 'look' right before I continue)

Sale detail is pretty much done on the face but there's still work to be done on the throat and shoulders. 

Added a little more detail on the head, worked on the throat and shoulders. And done.

Compiled together into a spread :)

Companion sketches for the
kingfisher- top two were used
but couldn't get the bottom one to
look good no matter what I did.

Kingfisher Finished

Common kingfisher. Photoshop. 3.16.14