On our trip to Botswana many years ago, we observed a pride of lions kill and devour a cape buffalo over the course of three days - it was a chilling and amazing experience. Overhead, vultures were in every tree waiting for their turn to fight over the remaining scraps. Once they slipped in and got to work, they left nothing of the buffalo but its cleaned bones. You saw those bones in my previous painting Chobe Checker.
One group of vultures is the inspiration for this painting Birds of a Feather. As with many of my paintings, there may be more to it than initially meets the eye.
As I did for Chobe Checker, I've created a slide show of the creation of Birds of a Feather, from the initial pencil sketches to the finished painting - 27 weeks of work condensed into a few minutes. For the best viewing experience, click on the full-screen icon in the lower right hand corner of the slide show. I've paced the slides so that you have plenty of time to read the short captions and still see the details of the images. There is music with the slide show, so turn on your computer's speakers if you want to hear it. If you like silence, that's fine too.
Following is a link to this slide show. Just click on it. If you don't see the link, move your cursor to the empty space below, and it will appear.
http://slide.ly/view/ed9d27e8fbb434c23a658f64d5c88c5a
For those of you who haven't seen the Chobe Checker slide show, I'm including a link to it as well. Even for those who have seen it, you may want to look at it again since I've added captions and changed its format to make it easier to view. Here is that link. Again, if you don't see the link, move your cursor to the empty space below.
https://slide.ly/view/084d6bb1d6307875572f912f219f379d
Feel free to pass these links on to anyone you think would enjoy them. If you'd like to read more blog posts, just scroll down. The most recent posts are at the top, so you'll have to scroll all the way down for the earliest posts and work your way up to the present.
Please let me know your thoughts, questions or comments. Thanks.