Special thanks to the model for kindly collecting her feathers for months to prepare for this portrait, even though keeping your own shedded feathers is considered a bit creepy among avians.

I’ve noticed many times that upside down realistic anthros are very difficult to “read” in terms of pose and expression, especially if they aren’t facing the viewer. I guess it’s because some of their body features don’t look human enough when turned upside down, and that interferes with our ability to automatically decode human poses and expressions. For this picture I experimented a bit until I found a pose for the character that I think reads well upside down. Transposing the color pattern of a blue-and-yellow macaw onto an anthro body meant she should have an almost entirely white muzzle, which was perfect for the task - being a single color high contrast area the lines defining the expression wouldn’t mix up with color gradients or fur textures. Whether it actually reads well is up to the viewer to decide, still these are the kind of design problems I love to explore.