Crane your neck to see the brolga

This week - Australian animals! I decided first I wanted to do something inspired by petroglyphs. I browsed Australian petroglyphs on Wikipedia until I found this one that appealed to me - I like the super-exaggerated long legs:

It's described as a brolga. Hadn't heard of that before! It's a kind of crane with a patch of red on its head. So I drew my own take on the stylized cranes. I see now, however, that I didn't get all the legs as dramatic as I could have - I think each individual crane I drew became less exaggerated, in fact.



I made the crane bodies a blue-gray to be a compromise between the color of the real cranes and the color of rock. Plus the touches of red on the heads for fun. The designs in the background are supposed to be suggestive of grass but I couldn't quite satisfactorily resolve the color. I'm not sure what would work better, but it seems not quite right.

This came in 43 out of 175 with 209 votes. My favorite entry was this gentle Kookaburra stripe. The cutest one was the Aboriginal-art-inspired animal assortment that came in seventh.