new projects underway

Ive two new projects underway right now.the first is a pencil drawing that may turn out to be a prelim for a full-size oil painting,just fancied trying it in graphite first.the drawing depicts a scene I came across a couple of years ago whilst walking along a beach at Minehead,UK.A juvenile peregrine had taken a rock dove and was busily plucking it on the beach,before too long it was joined by a crow who in turn was joined by another and so forth until the poor peregrine was surrounded by a murder of crows.despite the provocation and having to endure wing and tail feather pulling from the crows the falcon ate its fill before being driven off.fortunately I had my camera with me to record the events as it was too far away to see anything clearly with the naked eye and I think there will be a few images produced in oils and pencil of the encounter eventually.this drawing depicts the early part of the falcons encounter when there were just a couple of initial crows starting to get a little too close for comfort for the young bird.at this stage the falcon would occasionally abandon its prey in order to turn on its tormentors and drive them back a few feet.it was a really amazing event to witness and I hope the drawing will do it justice.
my second piece is an oil painting,itself a re-working of an earlier graphite drawing entitled Stealth,prints of which are still available from my website www.clivemeredithart.weebly.com .the big cat is a Sumatran tiger and like my previous cheetah painting the cat is looking very purposeful.the rather odd underpainting is as a result of originally planning a completely different subject on the canvas and starting that underpainting before I lost interest in the piece.