Getting the detail started

This first pic is of the hummingbird tail, blocked in with a few coats of oil and nothing more.
I decided to start carving out the tail feathers with the specimen under the microscope and the black line drawing overtop of the block in began to take shape. Little shifts and adjustments in form is a very interesting way to develope your painting and take it to the next level.
This is the final pic of shift and base color correction, before I proceed with the microscopic details as I see through the microscope. I find this part to be the most fun, but the most challenging is still to come. Look at the difference between the first tail pic and the last...quite a difference!