The Visayan Wrinkled Hornbill

I worked on this Millie Marotta image in September (2015) for two days. It's from her book Tropical Wonderland. I used my very reliable Colleen 785 set of 36 dual tip. I first looked up which variety of this bird it was. I'm pretty sure it's a horn bill but which among the many kinds I wasn't particularly sure. I even quizzed my husband who thought it was a fisher king. I hope the artists would include the names of the animals they've drawn so that coloristas wouldn't have to guess or search for that information. Sometimes I'm left clueless having no idea what it's called in the first place.

Anyway I found out that this beautiful creature is from the Philippine islands! It's called the Visayan wrinkled horn bill that can be found in our country's beautiful island of Panay, where the famous Boracay is.

Excited that its habitat is close to home I started working on it with a bit more enthusiasm. For the beak I used only various pencil shades apart from the shading technique. I found myself subconsciously creating the highlights on the beak as I colored, hence the shimmers. The 3D effect that achieved was something that I didn't plan, I just followed the groves of the lines and noticed that I was darkening the trough parts of the grooves while I left white or uncolored the crest parts.

This was my photo reference which I took from a site in the internet, panaynewsphilippines.com.

The brown color of the chest was, for me, not entirely brown. Like the cockerel's lower wing in a previous post, I could see a red tint in it. Realizing I wanted to approximate this hue I then encountered a limitation in my colored pencils set. I didn't have that exact color :( I decided to blend brown with violet and maroon. As you would see I arrived at various shades of brown and red. Oh well, life's not perfect. Maybe in heaven one could do that.

Maybe one day I'll put a background on the original work which is still here in my book.

I had the page photocopied and printed in color by a professional so I could give the image to a friend who is a cancer survivor. It's now framed and ready to be gifted!