Big Year!

I'm having a bit of an odd year. I am fortunate to have spent 2020 focusing on my health and hopefully making some corrections to my approach in life where I take better care of myself as a creative and hopefully find more ways to balance life and work, perhaps earning more and working less (not 50-80 hour weeks, 7 days a week, 365). Well, life had other plans and it's been a busy year where I'm working a lot without a lot of profitability! So here's hoping 2022 will be better!

This year I was planning a series of bird illustrations based upon the idea of having a personal "big year" where I try to identify as many birds as I can, adding to the current birds I am aware of.

In January, I had the fortune to observe a lot of new migrating water birds at lake in Newtown called Lake Barber. I spotted flocks of these adorable American Coots.

For day 1 of Inktober I felt it might be nice to capitalize on this previous prompt and finally draw that Coot! Well, I was aiming for Audubon quality, but I think I misplaced my eye too far into the center of the head and it looks a bit more Edward Gorey!