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Bearded Vulture Portrait
This portrait was made as a personal project with the goal of capturing the essence of the bearded vulture.
Process
The first step to making a good painting or drawing that often gets overlooked, is gathering loads of references. To the right are some of the ones I gathered when starting the portrait.
The usage of references allows for an artist to grow and improve fast.
In a painting the most essential part of getting to a result is making a sketch or first draft of the image. This first idea will determine how you want the image to look in the end and enables other people to see your vision.
On the left in my sketch it's already noticable how I wanted my shapes to look and how I wanted the vulture to act.
Simple shadows allow me to invest more time into getting the details of the feathers right. It was all done in black and white so I could focus on making the values pop more.
Lastly I add colors using gradient maps and layer modes, adding a simple background behind the subject to keep the focus clear.
Timelapse
Fun facts
The bearded vulture has a diet that consists 70-90% out of just BONES!
That's right! BONES!! In order to properly be able to ingest the bones the vultures have to drop them onto rocks out of the air for them to break into smaller pieces.
The bearded vulture is usally white, but in order to seem more menacing, it colors itself various tones of red using mud that is rich in iron oxide, the 'alphas' in a population of them then being the reddest.
The bearded vulture is my favorite bird which is why I painted it!
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