I didn't get any in-progress photos of this year's model painting month project, as it was small with very detailed paintwork which I did all in one go, with no pauses for layers to dry or taking pictures, more of a rush-through-while-it's-working-out-ok technique!
So it's straight in to the Finished Models post for me this year!
My idea came from something I noticed over the years and found really interesting - our naturalised pheasants have a lot of variety, depending on where you look. Round home, all the pheasants are the same - a deep reddish brown, coppery on the sides, with a small white neck ring and dark head, and a chestnut rump. I've never seen any variations in the fields and lanes where I live, they're
all like this handsome chap here :
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]But head out across the next county, towards the richer area of grand estates and Victorian shooting parties, and you see a lot more
fancy pheasants. As a child, my family nickname for them was 'pheasants with their best hats on', because one of the most noticeable things as they pop their head out of the long grass or run away down the lane, was the little cap of pale feathers. But that isn't the only difference, as as I got older I started to notice there were lighter coloured ones, with sandy and straw-coloured areas on the body, and grey wings. Some of them had very wide neck rings. I'd try to get a photo each time I saw one which looked out of the ordinary, and kept them in a folder to compare the colours and patterns. Occasionally, I'd see a darker variation, all metallic purpley-bronze fading into the blue- head and neck. And once I managed to catch a near-black variation on camera, with iridescent blues and greens in the sheen on his feathers.
Here's a selection of the colours I've captured on camera over the years!
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]'Pheasant with his best hat on' - the body colour isn't too different to my local birds, but the triangle of wing is paler.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Two different colours side by side
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]With a grey rump and much more prominent spotting on the back
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Another with grey patches - this seems to be the commonest colour in the north of the county toward the coast
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]This one is even paler, with a sort of blondish straw-colour in place of the usual copper, a much more distinct border to the red chest, and more beige and grey on the wings and rump. Also the biggest 'hat' I've ever seen!
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]A back view of the same bird, the spotting/streaking patterns are very noticeable
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]And then we have the dark variations, this stunning chap is all purpley-blue with contrasting pale wings and rump
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Another view - he also has no neck ring
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]A terrible photo, but this one looks to have the blonde-ish colour much further up his back
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Known as black pheasants, you can actually still see some variation in colour on different areas of the feathers
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]I've only ever seen three in this darkest colour, and only caught pictures of these two.
Reading up on the subject, it turns out the variation is the end result of the country estates importing different subspecies from the pheasant's natural range in centuries past. They wanted more colours, to make them better prizes for the shooting - the variations were stuffed and displayed in the houses as trophies, to collect as many colours as possible was a respectable hobby in that era when someone could be both a killer of birds for entertainment, and also a naturalist! The pheasants happily interbreed between subspecies, so by this point in time the genetics are pretty muddled in the feral populations, and you see lots of in-between colours and patterns, rather than every individual neatly matching one of the true wild relatives.
I thought it would be really interesting to paint some of them, using Papo's lovely model, and I started with the 'pheasant with his best hat on' which kickstarted my interest in these colour variations to start with.
Here's a before and after shot!
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Papo's paintwork was ok, but extremely simplified for the mass production - the best painted part was the face, and it was so neat and precise that I decided I couldn't do better if I tried, and left the original paint alone.
The rest of him was painted with Citadel (Games Workshop) acrylics, because I had all these colours for my custom horses anyway.
The metallic effect is added with gel pens, scribbled on and then blended with a paintbrush so there weren't any weird lines or edges showing. I ended up buying a multicoloured pack of those pens years ago when I needed a gold one for a totally different miniatures project, and a pack of ten colours including gold and silver was the same price as a pack of two gold ones. I thought I might use the silver one day, so I picked up the multicolour set and then put the rest away in the things-I'll-probably-never-need-again craft box
But I thought of them when I started looking closely at how many different colours of shine there are on a pheasant, and on this model I used the red, purple, copper, blue, and green, so they definitely came in handy, and stopped me having to buy ridiculous amounts of metallic paints for the amount I'd need on a tiny bird
Here's some more pictures of my finished repaint, some in the bright sun and some in the shade, as the light brings out his metallic shine better, but the details show more when it's dull
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]This one makes me laugh, he has such a funny expression from the front!
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]I know we're only supposed to nominate one model as our Model Painting Month animal, but this project could never finish at a single bird, so I carried straight on and painted him a friend!
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]And it's one of the even more unusual ones! The dark variation with very blue iridescent feathers, but the lighter colour on the back and wings.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]The blue looks a bit over the top in all these daylight photos, but indoors it isn't so bad, I think my gel pen stuff does weird things in the brighter light and makes him look like he's actually bright blue rather than black with a shine which moves with the light. One of those models which is better in the hand than in pictures
And then yesterday I decided to keep going while I was on a roll - I haven't painted anything for a few months, so this was a welcome return of my creativity, the month deadline being the motivation I needed to get me going again! So my third Papo pheasant got his new coat of colour, too, this time one of the pale kind with a lot of grey and blonde tones
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]And here's all three together...
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]Posed in a more natural group - I think it would be quite nice to set up an autumn scene with drifts of my tiny dried leaves, to cover the obvious bases and make a more realistic photo.
I'm going to have to order more Papo pheasants at some point soon, because I'd love to complete my set with two more - I still haven't done the all black colour, or my local reddish-coppery one I see all the time. And if I ever spot any others in the wild, I'll do them too!
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Wow wonderful transformation! 
Some comparisons with the official versions of this figure, and a couple larger cousins:
