As with all my animal and human portraits, I started painting the eyes first. Get that lovely dark orange iris in first before dirtying up the colour with a dark. Leave a little line of white canvas for the eye's reflective light so that you can fill it in with a very light blue later. For the dark iris and shadows under the eagle's brow, I initially used just a dark Burnt Umber and Cadmium Red mix. When the eye was dry, I then darkened up the pupil with a black and went over the eye's reflective light with a touch of white.
Beak next - I washed over her beak with a very light Burnt Sienna. Burnt Sienna mixed with Ultramarine Blue makes a lovely grey. I added this to the ends of the beak and for shadows. I gradually painted darker shadows to sharpen the beak and tiny feathers on her nose. The gap between the beak is a fairly red/purple, gradually darkening where the gap is wider.
You can see that I have then just loosely brushed in some colours for the feathers. I'm using Burnt Sienna, Red Gold, lemon and some Cadmium Red for the browny-orange feathers and the Burnt Sienna with Ultramarine Blue for the blue/black feathers.
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