How to paint a realistic pigeon

I'm going to start off my painting by covering it all in grey acrylic paint. Here's my Stay Wet palette with the colours I'll be using. A Stay Wet palette is basically just a plate with some wet tissue paper and on top of that I put some greaseproof paper just to keep the acrylic paints wet so they don't dry out while I'm using them. So here I'm starting off doing the form of the pigeon so just using a very heaped paintbrush. Just mixed it in with some grey and white and a little touch of blue. So I just carry on blending the colours. Blend, blend, blend. Adding a bit more paint. Trying to get this kind of colour gradient. Just monochrome for the time being. I love using thick acrylic paints. Now we're going to add the wings. So in a black I'm just outlining the wing and colouring it in. Giving the pigeon a little bit more form and shape as I go along. Now using a brown I'm doing some chest plumage. So just using a lot of brown. Thick brown acrylic paint. Just getting the shape of where it's going to go. This is kind of the under layer. So I'm using the paint wet on wet. Just putting in the head there and you can see the beak. It's starting to take form. Blend it all in. Now I'm using like these dashy lines just so it looks more like feathers. Adding a touch of light blue to places. Dabbing on the paint so it looks more like feathers. And then the markings. The white markings on the beak and nose area. Now for the eye just using some lilac. Adding a little bit of lilac to the chest plumage. Now some nice purple colour just around the beak area. Mixing that in with some black. And some black underneath the beak. Adding a few more little dashes just to show that there are feathers there. Adding a bit of shadow underneath. And now I'm just painting in the little feet. Using this vibrant pinky colour. And now for the shadow underneath. I'm doing this in a purple colour just to keep all the colours similar. To make a lovely colour palette. Now going back in with some black just to define the feathers in this area. And then on the bottom and the shadow. Just adding in the little claws. And now to define the eye. So I'm using a lot of black on a very fine paintbrush. This little pigeon is going to be asleep so he's got his eyes closed. Adding a little bit of shadow there. Defining the beak somewhat. Now adding a lighter blue. Just to show the highlights. Now adding this lovely purple colour. Purple and white actually. Making it the same colour as the shadow. Now adding a touch of highlights to the eyelid. And then highlights to the wing. Just dabbing and pressing it on. Gives that effect of feathers. Using different types of brush strokes to denote different types of textures. You can see I'm using my paintbrush was on its side. Now for this nice pale green. To show the kind of iridescent qualities of the plumage around the chest and the head. A touch of yellow and white. Add in some more shadow. A little bit of purple mixed in with black down there. Now I'm going to just define the outline. Adding that grey that I did at the start with a touch of purple in there. Adding the highlights. Now I'm going to be using these iridescent pens. You won't see much at the moment but when they're in the sun, which I'll show you now, they sparkle. Isn't that cool? Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed seeing how my painting is made.