My project in Artistic Watercolor Techniques for Illustrating Birds course: Far Across the Sea

This, I suppose, is what happens if before learning painting, you learnt printing, because instead of mixing, I almost exclusively worked by layering. I did have some difficulties with the golden she-eagle, specifically to get the legs and the chest right, and had to lift some layers of Payne's Grey and Prussian Blue.
Also, I created the final composition completely digitally, arranging them in Photoshop Elements until I had what I wanted to paint… just like the layers in a silkscreen print. I then used a lightbox pad to copy it (my old art teacher would be so proud lol).
One annoying difficulty I still have is the eyes of these two. With the Bald eagle, the thing is notoriously difficult to get right (and you can't use watercolour since it's too detailed - I used an Indian ink pen), and with the Golden eagle, the eyes are practically invisible due to the angle…
I started by making a general base layer of a mix of light gold, yellow and orange for the "warm" areas, and in Coffee-level Prussian/Cobalt blue with some turquoise for the off-light areas. Then, I started laying in the feathers: With such big, powerful birds, I actually went and got a sword point brush for the big feathers to keep the sense of power in one stroke. I did dab the areas where the feathers were simply to cover their body, but I used a size 4 and 6 to keep the feathers not too small.
I fixed my continuous problem of the white feathers of the Bald eagle not standing out against any kind of white background by sketching in the tail feathers with Indian ink and defining the head with some dots of Prussian blue (I used a Winsor & Newton Watercolour marker).
As finishing touch, I taped off the birds with masking tape and used some Liquitex Acrylic iridescent ink in black, white, copper, gold and silver, to create a luminous confetti on the off-white carton.