At the start of October Matt Chun released Australian Birds, which features the images of 16 different species of birds created using pencils and water colour alongside information about each animal. 

“Usually I do human portraits, so I think I brought some of that to the depiction of the birds,” the Bermagui artist said. 

“I treated them as portraits, rather than studies as a species. 

“It’s not intended to be a field guide, it’s more playful and more focused on creating a character.” 

In order to draw the portraits he looked at birds in the wild whenever possible as well as looking at many photos and videos, so the final pictures were half composites of all that information and half imagination, focusing on personality rather than accuracy. 

“I think birds are very familiar, but at the same time they are quite alive,” he said. 

“I think it’s important to treat them as individual characters rather than representative of a whole group of animals.” 

He was excited by the fact it is the first book he has released and he enjoyed the process of creating it so much he has another project in the pipeline as a companion to Australian Birds.  

“I’ve always been very interested in picture books as a form, but I’ve never tried to get into that until the publisher contacted me,” Mr Chun said. 

“So now it’s something I’m keen to do more of, maybe get a little bit more experimental.” 

He said children’s books “just get people with their guard down”. 

“It’s still something that needs to be consumed as an object as well,” he said.

“A lot of people are reading books on Kindle, but a children’s or picture book still needs to be held in your hand.” 

As part of the promotion for his book, Mr Chun recently drew a cassowary on the window of Candelo Books in Bega.

He will also be drawing birds on the windows of book shops in Sydney and Melbourne this month to launch the book. 

And his favourite bird? The galah.