Pastel of a Bird

Cameron and I both love birds and the old naturalist drawings. Cameron wishes often he was born in that era and could have been out among the naturalists. We decided that it'd be fun to have our room be done in that naturalist style, focusing on birds. Slowly we're getting ideas of what we want to do, but it's coming slowly slowly slowly. Today I decided to add one thing to our bird room. I've had this photo pinned on my Bird Bedroom Pinterest Board for a while now:

http://www.etsy.com/listing/111843756/robin-limited-edition-giclee-print-from

I love it, but $140 is a little more than I want to pay for a picture at this point in our lives. So when something is too expensive what do you do? Make it yourself. I had a box of soft pastels that I hadn't yet learned how to use very well, so I decided to pull those out (since the original was done in pastels) and see if I could get something similar. 

My bird isn't as spectacular, but I'm pleased with how it turned out, especially for my first time with these pastels. I used an orange and a black colored pencil to help with some details after the initial drawing was done, but most of it is done with pastels. 

I see many things that I would try different this time, but I still like it. My pastels are big and chunky, so it was hard to get in and do fine details. Maybe I should have made it bigger (it's a 4x6) to help with that. I broke some of the pastels in half to get a sharper edge and that helped some, but not a lot.