Thanks Shanan for the class! My favorite part was the exercises with the different backgrounds, so this is what I used for my class project. Including 2 kinds of brush strokes for the birds, as you can see. This is great, it gave me a lot of different options to draw and paint birds! I used a thin kind of cotton paper (which is all I have, or it is cellulose), so it can only better from here! 

Birds in the clouds:

Birds and Sunset: