Stuffed and numbered birds on display at the small but wonderful Stewartry Museum, Kircudbright; I didn’t have time to paint all their glorious colours, so had to settle for ink-brush monochrome, concentrating on feathers and form. Then the head of a dead Gannet found while beach-combing (I put it on a stick to draw it). The gannet was fairly ripe, and the orange neck feathers had lost their smoothness, but the beak was still an impressive fish spear (the beak’s four inches long, and unlike most birds they have no nostrils so water doesn’t get forced up them when they hit the water at sixty miles-per-hour!) .

Lexington grey in fountain pen and water-brush, water-colour, A5 – 30 mins for the birds, 15  for the Gannet