Bald Eagle Painting

I’ve been learning how to make digitally hand-painted artwork from my photos, using brushes in Photoshop. I had reached a point where I wanted to challenge myself, using a less-than-ideal reference photo, more like the cell phone photos I might get from a client to base a painting on.

I chose this photo of a bald eagle because I had missed the focus and it was quite soft around his eye, making it necessary for me to go in and paint all those fine details, the tiny feathers around his eye, and the striations in his iris.

Here is a GIF showing the before and after of the painting.

I photographed this fellow at the Mountsberg Raptor Centre, in Ontario. Years later, I learned from a friend who used to volunteer there that every spring, he and the other male eagle he was housed with would build a nest and try to incubate a rock in their enclosure, which is both sweet and sad. The Mountsberg Raptor Centre is an educational facility, and the birds that live there have either been raised in captivity or cannot be returned to the wild due to injuries.

Prints of this painting are available for purchase here.