Stage 5: I was unhappy with the random pattern of floating reeds - it made the composition look too static. Reference photos showed that the reeds actually seemed to be arranged more in drifts so I decided to introduce a flow to the pattern to lead your eye up from the bottom of the picture towards the bird. Here I have started roughly blocking in this new pattern, more-or-less obliterating what I had done before with more opaque paint. I'm using this process to introduce more of the intended final colours to the painting.