"Hawkeye" 61 Project

This red tailed hawk was rescued by the granddaughter of one of my oil painting students. She was able to take a wonderful photo of it and when I saw it, I just knew I had to paint it.  I used it to demonstrate painting a bird eye for my advanced class. Eyes are fun to paint because you can add so many tiny color shifts, even if they aren't in the reference material.

Interestingly, a hawk's eyes have 1,000,000 photoreceptors per square mm, as a opposed to humans mere 200,000. They can see colors that we can't begin to see. The main predator is believe it or not, the crow (!). Crows mob together to attack a hawk, their mob is called a murder. Yikes! Hawks are popular birds to use in falconry as they are social, easily trainable and can live to the ripe old age of 20.

Hawks are fascinating: fierce, majestic and beautiful in a forbidding sort of way. I always hear that John Denver song The Eagle and the Hawk when I see them.

What do you think when you see a hawk fly?