Peacocks are beautiful birds, whether or not they have their tails fanned. They are wonderful creatures to photograph, as photographer Barry Forbes recognizes. They tend to walk at a leisurely pace, which gives you time to focus your camera. They hold interesting poses, which gives you plenty of opportunity to capture attractive shots. Their iridescent blue-green plumage is artistically appealing anyway, but when a peacock opens out its tail, you get a special chance to snap something eye-catching.
According to DLTK's Crafts for Kids website, you can make a peacock handprint that incorporates a template. You print your template of choice, in either black and white or color, and then cut it out. You trace your child's hands, with splayed fingers to replicate the peacock's fanned tail, onto colored paper and cut them out. An alternative step is to create the prints by painting your child's hands and then pressing them onto paper. You glue the peacock's head to its body and its face onto its head. You add feathers, the handprint wings, the tail, feet and a decorative paper flower to complete your peacock.
Because peacocks move relatively slowly, they make good subjects for sketching. Once you have captured a few pages of sketches "in the field," you can return to your studio, or hobby room, and begin producing a more detailed drawing. The KalaaLog website suggests you begin with "construction lines," which are the broad outlines of the peacock's shape, drawn with a pencil. Then you add the details with darker pencil lines. After that, you can go over the details with a pen to produce the line art detail. When the ink is dry, erase the pencil lines.
Peacocks are fascinating creatures that you can just sit and observe for long periods of time. If just sitting there and watching doesn't appeal to you, why not combine observation of these majestic creatures with video recording? Documentaries on peacocks are relatively rare, so you might, with luck, capture peacock behavior that hasn't previously been caught on film. If you capture anything amusing, you might want to send the footage to a TV program that features humorous clips of animals.