An oriole for speciesxchange. (a Baltimore oriole, incidentally, because DC AREA REPRESENT.) The theme for this round was orange and/or black animals, but female orioles are more yellow than orange, so. I referenced these photos pretty heavily, which would be okay except for the fact that I ended up relying on the photos and not using my imagination; the only thing hinting that this is my fursona instead of a generic oriole is the vaguely lonely expression. :(

All that aside, I'm pretty proud of this. I definitely did a better job using colored pencils than I did in my last drawing for SXC. (Thank you for the suggestion about blending, parsnip!) This was my first attempt to draw a realistic bird, and while there are some problems (those feet oh man), I think in general it's all right.