Wildlife paintings come from many different sources, real and invented. We combined the two in our paintings using a subject from one place and the background from another. The process starts with fieldwork. Some arts were put together from different photos taken by us, our father, other wild life photographers (Dr. T.S.U. de Zylva, Mr. Gehan Rajapakse, Mr. Namal Kamalgoda, Mr. Gehan De Silva Wijeyeratne, Mr. Palitha Anthony and Mr. Sarinda Unamboowa). Painting from photographs down to every detail could leave us bored at times. So we have looked for ways to make them interesting and made our own expressions through the paintings.

Saying all that, we love sketching outdoors, but that means coping with the sun's glare, rain, wind, security issues and subjects that tend to wander away. When sketching outdoors we had to capture the subject's gestures quickly and then note down colours and direction of light and shadows. That way, if the animal or bird moves out of sight we still continued the sketch as a memory painting based on our notes.

We thought of doing our first book about birds as we are inspired by their spontaneity, beauty and freedom of movement in their natural habitats. We have experienced the excitement of the birds of prey hunting, and the alertness of other birds for their survival. Each bird has its own character. They have a kind of proudness and an elegance of their essence. When we see a bird we don't want to just experience that it looks red or blue. We always wanted to see their textures up close. We wanted to see how it looks in sunset or sunrise and wanted to see how it looks flying, sun light pouring through its wings or how alert it looks when diving or eating or making a kill, and also how they look in different backgrounds and situations. That interest and excitement was the reason we wanted to share our love for birds and animals with you, and hope you enjoy sharing the same love and care towards them as much as we do!