This is drawing is a preparatory study for a large oil painting I did of Tasmanian wedge-tailed eagle, the first of my Endangered wildlife series. While wedge-tailed eagles are common on the mainland, in Tasmania they are endangered.
I drew this from life in the store rooms of the Melbourne Museum, depicting it life-size in order to capture something of the the energy and scale of the bird, while carefully noting the feather patterning and tonal variation.