picking up a paintbrush

I haven't painted in years, excluding the times I've painted in my Secret Garden book. Almost as soon as I finished my A Level in fine art it's like all of the creativity was zapped out of my system and I didn't have any inspiration to put anything to paper, until a couple of weeks ago when I was thinking of ideas for the house. The walls are still bare throughout most of the house, which is something I've been meaning to change, but I haven't had any clue what to put up on them. I always check the wall art aisles in shops hoping to find something that jumps out at me, but I've never found anything that I'm 100% happy with. I'm doomed to be an indecisive shopper, so I figured I'd have to have a go at making something myself. (Yada yada something about if you want something doing right etc...)

I had the idea of painting a peacock in a similar style I did for one of my GCSE final pieces where there was a mixture of painted elements and collage of little bits and pieces I'd had lying around. The original idea was to paint the main body of the peacock and then collage the feathers, although that idea didn't really pan out in the end. I've just finished an A4 sized mock-up so I could try out different techniques before going out and getting a big canvas and I'm quite happy with the end result to say I'm rusty with a paintbrush! My plan is to carry on adding layers to make the feathery parts seem a little more realistic and I'm going to add more to the background so it isn't as plain, but here's what I've done so far...