Great Blue Heron ~ "Spread Your Wings" ~ "Oh, to Fly" ~ Watercolor Songbirds & Friends This red-tailed hawk pastel painting

This red-tailed hawk pastel painting captures the most common yet most underappreciated raptor in North America

and painting it required understanding the specific aerodynamics that shape the wing posture

My Shadows of the Sky collection pairs these two snowy owl pastels with studies of the bald eagle

This chickadee watercolor art captures a pair of black-capped chickadees in their most characteristic mode — active

They draft off each other's wake turbulence

Great Blue Heron ~ "Spread Your Wings" ~ "Oh, to Fly" ~ Watercolor Songbirds & Friends This red-tailed hawk pastel paintingThis blue heron original watercolor is an invitation to let go. "Spread Your Wings" captures a great blue heron at full extension wings stretched to their widest span, body suspended in that extraordinary moment when gravity loosens its grip and the bird becomes part of the sky. It's the most open, most vulnerable, most magnificent posture a heron can hold. I created this piece freehand using my Kissho Gansai pigments from Kyoto natural mineral