Tuning a Bird

In spite of being an avid birder and painter most of my life, it was only six months ago that I decided to combine the two and paint birds exclusively.  The learning process continues, not only to depict them accurately, but to capture the un-tangible loveliness that drew me to the subject in the first place.  This Little Blue Heron was a battle.  For days I worked on tuning the colors just right--blue verses red, gray verses vibrant.  If I can hit the color notes I’m looking for while attaining a sparkle of detail in the head of a bird, then I consider a painting a success.  Here's a sampling of my battle:

It always gets worse before it gets better, and every successive "wrong" layer can create variety and depth in the final product.