Happy Mother's Day - with Vultures!

It used to paint/draw/etc a lot of pictures for my mum, until the year she said "please do not give me any more pictures in frames, as I'm running out of room to store them". So instead I gave her a 6x6 scrapbook album with one picture in it, and for every occasion (Christmas, Birthday, Mother's Day) I draw another page for it. So far I have given her: chickens, a villa in Italy, fantails and a kakapo. As you can see, we both love birds. The picture represents what she is interested in at the time or something relevant to our lives. Thus when I was in Hawaii, I rustled up her Mother's Day piece.

And here it is:


These wee guys are Apapane, one of the more common and easily recognisable of the Hawaii Honeycreepers - a strange little family of Passerines that evolved on the islands to much the same purpose as Darwin's Finches. The curly ferns, although stylised, are modelled on some that were in the lovely rainforest view outside our little cabin on the island of Hawaii. I stylised it somewhat, using the technique of several local artists. These use prismacolour pencils, which I acquired whilst I was over there.

Now onto the vultures. These are for the Spring Choose-a-theme where we each join a group with a set "umbrella theme" - in this case "animals" and we all select something within that theme that we wish to base our four cards on. So here are my offerings, I hope you like them.

They are a Turkey Vulture, a King Vulture, a Lammergeier and an Egyptian Vulture.
I'm not sure if I'm 100% happy with them all. The colouring of white birds is hard!