Miniature Painting - No 2 - Seagull

Today's miniature painting is a seagull in flight. This is also from a reference photo I took in Astoria, OR, the same trip as when I took the deer photo for the previous painting.

I love backlighting like this, with the light shining through the feathers from above. And the bright white bird against the deep blue sky had such nice contrast. I think blue and white are always lovely together, like snow and water.

 Seagull in Flight

7"x5" oil on Gessobord

As I mentioned previously, I've been doing smaller works to try to loosen up and prevent myself from obsessing over tiny detail. This hasn't worked very well because I usually just manage to find a smaller brush to do smaller detail. :) But, in this case, I managed to resist my temptation to use a tiny brush and got some nice thick painterly brush strokes in there. Please comment and let me know what you think!