Hi John, some great stuff here; I admire your courage in trying out so many media so effectively. I've been developing my use of digital media too and have found Artrage - now up to version 4 - excellent and an absolute steal for the money (see
www.artrage.com/). It has a much simpler and more intuitive user interface and a slimmed down but just as powerful range of tools as that offered by Corel Painter. Why not download the trial version? You'll never go back to Painter - or Photoshop for that matter! As with all digital painting software, a tablet is almost essential and it's much easier than using a mouse once you've got over the initial hand-eye co-ordination issues. You have used a photographic reference in your Whinchat illustration (second version for me also BTW); did you import your photo and then 'manipulate' it using the drawing package or is it 'scratch drawn'? I've enclosed a couple of my recent scratch drawn efforts using Artrage's pencil tools, just to show how effective it is.
Incidentally, I accidentally hit upon the new book by John Muir Laws on the net today. He's an American artist from the same stable as David Sibley. His website and blog (
http://www.johnmuirlaws.com/) are real eye-openers and contain a wealth of tips, tricks and info for aspiring bird artists; feast your eyes!
LL
Incidentally