I found an awesome, royalty free reference
photo of a raven in mid-blink — by "SalsolaStock" on
deviant art and began a digital painting/study of it.

Before long I had a good beginning...and
started creating an appropriate background for it.

Since I've lived in the southwest for a
number of years, and have driven and hiked
through a lot of that kind of terrain — I decided
to put the crow in that type of environment.

I used a photograph of buzzards I took near
the Salt River east of Phoenix, as a reference for
the two distant birds in the background sky.

I finished this one in July of 2013.

Read more about this image on my blog.

 

jrcurt77@msn.com

Image: Copyright 2013, Jephyr (Jeff Curtis), All Rights Reserved