You may have noticed that I have quite a few pieces based on things my grandmother Elsie loved. Well, this one is bird that she despised. Blue Jays are the bullies of the yard, apparently. I think her attitude towards the Blue Jay gave it a special place in my heart- This poor unloved bird! The others get seeds, he gets the broom.
This illustration began in pencil with a mandala style border, I worked out how far in the layers would come, leaving enough space for the bird to sit comfortably. I worked out where his branch would come across, and where he would sit. I penciled him in to place.
I knew I wanted his perch to come across the mandala and cut through it, so I really sketched these hard lines in to sort out what would show in the forefront. My goal was to have the bird forefront, ahead of the branch, ahead of the mandala.
I wanted to include very floral and natural patterns within the border, without getting into specific plants. Lots of petals, berries, leaves, full flowers and branches.
I really like having the berries protrude further than the outer circle of the mandala. I can be really uniform in my work at times, so it’s nice to let something break through like that.
I left this piece black and white for a long time. It’s sometimes difficult to commit to colours, or be sure that it will help the piece and not ruin it. I’m a huge fan of black and white, so I do like to leave them like that for at least awhile most times.
In the end, after about a year of leaving it black and white, I decided to go in with blues, golds and warm auburn tones, with little hints of reds. I really like this colour combo- the auburn and blues always remind me of an aerial shot of Prince Edward Island.
Feeling pretty successful with the coloured version- It helped a lot of the little details shine through. I resisted the urge to full in every detail and really left a lot of white space. More of a highlight than a fill!
My favourite part was probably highlighting the berries. I often pick these red berries in the late fall and early winter, and save them to put in my bird feeder once everything is frozen. I read about doing this somewhere once, and just started to do it every now and again.
