New Christmas Birds Digital Painting - WIP1

Since the holiday season is not all that far off now, I'm starting a new digital painting of birds in a Christmas themed setting. To save myself some time I'm going to use some elements from one of last year's holiday themed bird painting, my Christmas Cardinals Feast painting shown here:

I like the idea of the birds on the fence strung with xmas garland. But for this year's painting I want to simplify the background and add more birds. Last year's painting was a nice, overall wintry scene. But this time I want to make the background less important and focus more attention on the birds and garland.

Here's my first work-in-progress (WIP1) post. Starting out I've removed all the background, including the bird feeder. I'll add a more subtle snowy background in later. I've also removed the big red ribbon and moved the jingle bells from the bird feeder down to the fence. On this smaller canvas the big red bow was competing for attention with the male cardinal.

As you can see I also added the outlines for a couple more birds. Next I modified the male cardinal a bit. I don't want the birds to be exactly the same in different paintings. So I rotated his body a bit so you see more of his back and wing feathers, and I turned his head so he's looking more to the right.

Next up I'm going to modify the female so she's not exactly as she was in the previous painting either. Stay tuned for WIP2.