The Townsville Common was scorchingly hot and cracklingly dry when we visited it during our recent trip. Much of the reserve had been burnt, all the watercourses were dry and birdlife was scarce, except for a few species of finch, such as the chestnut-breasted mannikins, one of which is featured in this painting. I don't really know what it was that made me want to paint a picture based on this photo. I just instantly did, as soon as I opened it up in Photoshop. After all the

This picture is maybe not one that I would normally have chosen as the subject for a painting, but Laura was visiting for one of our occasional “painting weekends”, and I had to choose a subject quickly from amongst my Koreelah NP photos. (Laura thinks I am very slow to decide what to paint.) If you look closely at the original photo, you might be able to see the two little silvereyes in the centre, perfectly posed, looking very cute! But therein lies the problem. To my mind,

There was something about the little pied cormorant in this photo, taken at Eungella National Park, during our recent trip. I liked the way the backlighting created tension between the pull of the rocks to the left, and the pull of the bird's beak to the right. Or maybe it was just that it would be a relatively easy subject to paint because it didn't have its wings spread out! These have to be amongst the most photogenic of birds. They have highly manouvreable heads and big f