Sketchcrawl May 6th - Unknown Bird Type

This is a sketch worked from a photo I took during the sketchcrawl yesterday at Elizabeth Evens Park in Mount Dore.  I have no idea what type of bird this is but wondering if in the Jay family due to the markings around the eye.  And also due to the blue in the body.  Maybe a female scrub or blue jay?

Working from my photo, I decided to do some practicing using the grid method rather than totally free-handing the pencil sketch.

Here are the steps I took:

Opened my photo in Photoshop Elements with grid view set up.  I like using the largest grid I can get away with so not to have too many blocks on paper to deal with.

In Journal (Stillman & Birn Beta), created a grid using very light pencil.  Then viewing the photo on screen, I placed little tick marks where each part of the bird intersected a grid line and also a few inside each block for prominent areas to help when line sketching.

Connecting the tick marks, I lightly sketched the bird.  (pencils lines darkened for illustration purposes)

Went over in ink using a Platinum Carbon desk pen and Lexy Gray ink.  Waited for the ink to totally dry and started erasing the grid lines.

Cleaned up erasing all pencil marks/lines.

Wet in wet, started adding color.  Used Black, Indigo, and Burnt Umber (all Daniel Smith watercolors)

The painting process for the rest of the bird was Indigo wet in wet, darkening some areas (under feathers) by dropping or brushing in Indigo as the paper was drying........still damp enough to bleed a little.

Once the Indigo was dry, I started dry brushing and blending Black.  Also added a little Bt Umber in the head at the top where the top of the wing overlaps.

After completely dry, gently brushed plain water in some areas of the back (randomly) and added a light glaze of the Burnt Umber.

Also lightly brushed water into the head and dropped a little Indigo making sure I didn't disturb the underlying colors (and lighter areas) already there.

I could have gone darker with maybe another glaze or two but it's been my experience that S&B paper to pill if too wet or too many layers applied with all the brushing.