ORIGINAL pastel painting, 20 x 17 inches. 

"Little pied cormorant" (Microcarbo melanoleucos). 

Media: Sennelier artists’ soft pastels, Schmincke artists’ soft pastels and Artists’ Spectrum soft pastels. 

Support: Canson Mi-Teintes TEX paper. 

Framed behind glass. 

This cormorant was perched on a rock beside Broken River near the Fern Flat campground in Eungella National Park. These have to be amongst the most photogenic of birds. They have highly manouvreable heads and big floppy feet, and since their feathers are not waterproof they spend many minutes perched near water between dives drying out, so are easy to photograph. Here, 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.