Smewtime, Alton Water

Here's another shot at one of this winter's Smew- this time almost camouflaged against wind-ruffled water, rather than stand-out white in a dark pool.  These swirly whorly water patterns I find very difficult to do- either you try and work out the shapes properly and carefully, or you take a run at it as I have here.

Some more Smew images here:  ed keeble's smugmug

3D Spoonie

Spoon-billed Sandpiper is a very tempting candidate for the 3D treatment.  This one is produced on the magnificent Sculptris program ( a free download at sculptris) which allows you to push and pull a ball of digi-clay into shape-  you can just see the original ball at the top of this screenshot. 

Then next step on this project was to convert the clay into a zingier material (called thuglee- what a fine name!), hopefully with the balance of blaze and shade reflecting the glorious-but-mysterious character of the bird.

Next steps could be to take the digital head and digitally paint it in Sculptris, texture it with the mighty Z-brush and maybe animate it.  But that's a whole new project for another day.

Meantimes though I couldn't resist firing the digital creation off down the wires to an online 3D printshop:  the two plastic heads shown below have just surfaced in the post and all I've got to do now is decide what to with them. Turning them into salt and pepper pots would seem too obvious.. 

    

Spoon-billed Sandpiper

More Spoon-billed Sandpiper images here:  edkeeble's smugmug

Greenshank on ice

Down to the river after the snow and amongst the out of place snipe, a beautiful Greenshank tiptoe-ing amongst the ice floes

Smewtime, Abberton

Smew are beginning to appear this winter in my neck of the woods- this one was bow-riding waves into the reeds on a ferociously windy day at Abberton.