I have a love-hate relationship with the Starlings here. They can strip my feeders in half an hour. This is fine when they do the cleanup so that we don't attract vermin, but not so fine when they harass the small birds away from the expensive tonic seed that I feed in autumn to help boost them all up for the winter. But I love the irridescent colours in their feathers. I love the cheeky intelligence and the bright spark of their spirits. They always look as if they're smiling. Probably because they're plotting more mischief.
I took this image through my sitting room window, double glazing and all. A lot of my photos are taken that way. Now, as a photo it's OK. Not bad. Not brilliant. But I can use this as a reference for an art piece. I import it into Krita on the computer first and work with the mouse to do the line art. I find that working this way makes sure that I am just doing line art. No sketching or shading. Just the shapes, in the right places, that make up the image.
Then comes the fun part. I export that line art as a PNG into Procreate on my iPad and begin to colour it in. I create a palette from the image, and then tweak it so that it works correctly. The ability to create a palette doesn't always include all the subtle shades that I see. Then I use a single brush on a single layer, with the lineart over the top. I colour, blend and erase using just the Derwent Pencil brush in Procreate.
Warning for anyone who has light sensitivities. This image in the video appears to flash as I turn the background white on and off several times to check the image for colour balance and make sure I have no blank spots. This is the timelapse of me drawing this image.
I love the way that this takes all of the things I love about the photo and makes them better. It doesn't matter that it's cropped in close - it's art. Pixel peep all you want, you'll see my lines and wonky shading close in. Like this.
It's so satisfying to watch him come to life on my screen as I work. I start with the eye because the soul of the bird is in that eye. Get that right and almost everything else can be a mess, but the eye will save it. This was the most complex piece I had drawn at this point. It took me three weeks. That blip of the 30 seconds makes it look like it took no time at all.
And there he is. Captured and free at the same time. Both friend and foe. This bird has nested and produced a whole mess of beige birds that have their new spangles already since the reference image was taken in April 2022. I've probably sworn at him through my window for chasing the wee robin away more than once. I still love the energy of him though. You can buy prints of this image from my pixels shop if you want him in your world more permanently.
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