I love to see the process that people go through to get their final art, no matter what the medium. I’ve been asked to illustrate a children’s story and for one page there is an Eagle, so here is how I got to the point of creating that character. 
The story is based in Paris so I discovered that the french eagle is the Golden Eagle. The top two are taken from images from google and the bottom two are interpretations of them. 
Outlined my favorite in Illustrator. 
Colored in Photoshop.
This isn’t the finished scene, but its a decent part of it.
Ham Eye Am 