More focused after my morning out, I set to work on the rest of the crane. The feet were easy, the harsher strokes that I tended towards favored the strong motions of the crane, especially when paired with the wings I had been working on earlier. I settled on a pose, mid take-off, where the head is tucked and obscured, suggested more than drawn in, the legs powerful and the neck red and bright among a sea of water droplets. This meant taking the best of the wings and the strongest of the legs to create a portrait worth using.
The black ink from the night before was still good, but I had to grind the crimson today. Using a much smaller ink stone, I ground a very tiny bit and then added water drop by drop, making sure that it was uniform in size and shape before letting it sit for an hour.
