Choosing my final picture

I decided a while ago that I wanted to paint a bird of prey so I chose to paint a red kite. First I drew some sketches to decide the composition of the picture. I looked at zooming in on one part of the kite and zooming out on the whole kite.

Aububon shot the birds he drew and then stuff them and put wire inside them. He then posed them and painted the bird in front of him. I won’t do this of course, I will draw it from a photograph. I looked online for photographs of red kites in different compsitions and I chose one of a red kite catching a fish not far from where I live.

Pictures of red kites

a red kite catching a fish