Our birds are so amazing and unique, I will never tire of drawing and painting them. I pencilled this piece out and deliberated for weeks over colour options. I said to my husband "what do you think about doing the whole thing in different hues of pinks and reds instead of my usual indigo palette?" He said "I think it will look shit, but you need to get it out of your system so you can move on".

I'm not sure if it's out of my system because I totally loved painting this piece - I'm such a colour junkie, and I could literally feel my serotonin levels rise as I was adding the hot pink to the paper and seeing it bleed against the other pinks. This painting was "finished" last month, waiting to be photographed, and then yesterday I added the proteas to it. Now I'm really happy with it, it's done. But i'm not done with the pink paint.