This painting is something of a departure from my usual style, in terms of its naturalistic approach. Its creation was inspired by an actual sighting of a kingfisher diving on the small river near to where I lived at the time - the event lasted barely a second, but that brief, striking flash of blue was memorable enough that I spent several hours (spread over the next six months) trying to recapture it in acrylics.
Specific technical challenges included rendering the river to convey both its darkness and its reflection of the sky whilst retaining some visibility of the bank continuing below the waterline, and blending the colours to become gradually brighter towards the right-hand end of the image as I aimed to subtly convey the impression that the bird itself is the main source of light in the scene.
Fun fact: the original event happened far too quickly to register any of the kingfisher's anatomical detail, and it was only while researching pictures of them after the fact that I realised they've got such stubby little tails.
