By the end of the day, we had taken so many pictures of white ibises that I had to laugh at how digital cameras have freed us from needing to conserve film. The wonderful thing about having “too many” pictures, is that somewhere in the bunch there might just be one that makes a good composition with very few changes needed. This Ibis composition was almost one photograph, but I still ended up using a second in order to get the true range of colour for the eye and bill.

I had fun with the juxtaposition of textures in this painting. The background and the body of the bird are very smooth, while the shells that the bird stands on are rough and thickly layered. I almost couldn’t believe how much white paint went into making that pile of shells. Now that it’s dry, the foreground is quite sharp to the touch.

For me, this composition seems to express some of the peacefulness that I always find when visiting the islands of Sanibel and Captiva. Almost the whole painting is made up of soft colours. The few points of intense colour are the eye, the beak, and the small pieces of seaweed in the foreground, which add refreshing contrast.