Endangered
Bird Week 2 starts today
The bill on these birds is so heavy that 2 of their neck vertebrae are fused in order to help them hold up their heads. They are about 2 feet tall. Mostly they eat fruit, but they do also eat small things like frogs and insects. They don't drink at all, their mosture comes from their food. The birds are monogamous. The female sort of walls herself up in a hole in a tree, and the male is responsible to bring all the food to her and the chick until their baby is old enough to leave. Deforestation is their biggest threat, and a serious problem. They are rare everywhere they are found, and are thought to be extinct now in Singapore. At the moment they are still in Sumatra, Borneo, and the Thai-Malay Peninsula.
The intensity of colour in comparison to what I was able to achieve with the watercolour is one of the many reasons I like oil paint so much more. One of the other things I really like is the texture I can add. Lastly, it is so much easier to "fix" things. If something seems wrong, you can add more paint and go over it to adjust the shape, or if you can't, you are able to scratch the lower layer of paint off. Now not all of my colours that I have are opaque enough to put on top of each other. One of my greens and my yellow for instance, they are very translucent. If I want to change something and add yellow over another colour, I have to use my fairly opaque white first and then put the yellow over it. Building up layers of paint with oils adds so much more depth. It doesn't really translate well in my photos, but maybe some day I will be able to show you in real life.