I like to have action in my paintings, and I enjoy creating characters to play roles in the illustrations. That's my favorite part of illustration”the process of drawing, developing a character, and pushing it, until it reaches exactly what I envision.

I wanted to keep the sparrows semi-realistic, but show emotion in their faces. I looked at a lot of pictures of sparrows because I like to draw from reality before I push it to something cartoony. Then, for reference, I copied my own expressions from a mirror for the eyes and cheekbones of the sparrows.

All of them have a sinister look in their faces, because they're fighting. One of them is getting away with a wingful of crumbs, so I wanted to make him look happy and mischievous. For the rest, I made angry, malicious faces.