painting new illustrations

I’m based at home this week, so I’m catching up with my emails and some painting. I wanted to update some of my older illustrations, and those which are doubled up in the birdwatching logbooks. I’m focussing on the Habitat titles at the moment, and making sure they are a core group and sufficiently different from each other to work as a set, with as few as duplications as possible. They have to work as stand-alone titles too though, so I’m not too worried if there are some of the same species, but I would like them to be different illustrations if nothing else.

I bought some new paper to try, and this is Bockingford 300gsm in white. It’s hot-pressed so it’s super smooth which I prefer as it scans more easily, even thought the paint texture can look a little patchy at times. I don’t actually mind that as in this world of perfection and standardisation and digital art, I’m happy for it to look like it’s been painted by a person. I normally get Fabriano Artistico but this paper had good reviews and was in the sale so I thought, why not?

Here are my latest batch:

Which is your favourite?