Thanks!

I've seen these a lot, there's a nature reserve near my house and you can see them roosting in trees at times.

Lucky! They are really something!

A rare case when shadows aren't really needed.

I don't like adding shadows to my work. I like it flat.

Well, I had different life experience. I was chastised by everyone, including most of my professors, for having flat "boring" colours. I tend to agree with them.

Your work does work with flat colours, since it is so stylistic, close to something like Samurai Jack. I am just so used to adding some shadows to everything I do that I forgot you can leave them out.

Your professors are full of shit, sorry to say. Many respected art styles (woodblock, Eastern Woodlands, etc) that appear in galleries and sell for thousands use either minimal washed out flat colors or bright primary straight from the tube colors. It's art, man. It can be what it wants to be. If a dot of purple on a canvas can sell for millions, your art can be what it wants.

Well, professors generally treat students individually. It's not that flat colours are the source of all evil, it's just to be a professioanl artist, you must be ABLE to apply shadows. Not that you have to, you just must have the ability.

Plus, I really like it, since lighting invokes mood, and mood is something I am currently in love with.

I'm not sure why your professors are so limiting, considering I've never had this sort of talk from a "professional artist". I still call bullshit. If you're implying that only light produces mood, then I suggest watching Song of the Sea and Secret of Kells. There's extremely limited use of shadow, or simply a flat colour to imply shadow and light, and it still packs a hell of a punch without complex lighting and shading. If one relies entirely on lighting/shadows for "mood", then, at least in my field, would be the worlds worst animator.

Well, this is impossible to do with flat colours http://www.sssscomic.com/comic.php?page=299

Ok? Who cares? I don't draw that way and probably never will.

I care. It's a personal thing. I guess I shouldn't have brought it up. Maybe.

You're being a touch passive aggressive about it, as if I should add shadows and intense lighting to my work. This isn't the first time you've done it and it's atouch irritating. Maybe you don't mean to come off that way, but that's how I'm interpreting it.

You should not add shadows, it's just I haven't seen many artists like you, that's all.

They also live out here in the western US, I see them on occasion when I'm out birding

Rad! Wish I could see!! Lots of bird watching out west!

To be honest i think I've seen more bird species out here in Montana than I ever saw back in Pennsylvania (where I was born and raised)
Definitely more birds of prey

In NJ we have TONS of birds, but you just gotta have your eyes more open for em. Then again I live in mostly rural areas, though a lot of our species blend in really damn well with the environments (like the goddamn whipowhill. I'm determined to see one in real life).

Yeah, sometimes I wonder how many birds I missed back when I lived in PA because I wasn't as serious of a birder back then. I don't even think I've even heard a whip-poor-will back the, and we don't have them here

The lines on this one flow like water! If you did a symmetrical portrait of the bird in the same position, you would have a KILLER tattoo!

BIRD TATTOOS. WAVE OF THE FUTURE