Ahhh isn’t in lovely when a vision comes to life! This one has been taking up space in my brain for quite a few months now… it might even be a year at this point, so I’m very glad to have finally done something about it. I’ve been wanting to do this idea for ages and I managed to scratch the itch a while ago, when I made the orange humming bird piece to turn in to a Patreon print. I loved how this turned out but still didn’t feel the idea was fully out of my system yet - I wanted to make one even bigger and better with more birds. So 6 months later I finally got round to it! I started with a mood board searching for the perfect references to use with a variety of positions and colours, but making sure they would all work together in one image. As for the birds, I chose only common (well common according to google… I honestly don’t thing Ive ever seen a blue tit) UK birds. That way there was a nice theme to stick to.
To warm up I sketched my favourite bird, then moved on to thumbnails. I quickly learnt that at this small scale, I wasn’t figuring out much in terms of composition, so I moved to an A4 sheet and spent the next few hours drawing, rubbing out and re-drawing birds and branches until I had something I liked.
For most of the birds, I wanted to paint some specific textures to mimic they’re patterns. I do this with most collages I make these days. Even though I have a huge folder bursting with painted paper, and I could easily make all these birds with what I already have, I find spending a little extra time and care for these small details, makes a big difference to the quality of the final piece. Little details like making sure I had some black dry brushing on a yellow background for the Goldfinch’s wing. For example, I could easily cut out a yellow strip and stick it to some black paper, but this way looks a lot better as it has more texture!
Once I had all my paper painted, I scanned in my sketch and scaled it to be the right size so I could trace the birds and make templates to work from. This makes my life a lot easier when it comes to collaging and makes sure I don’t waste my time on a bird which could be too big/ small, and when each bird takes 2-3 hours, that would be a big mistake! After all that prep work I could begin collaging the birds.
Blue Tit
Nuthatch
Goldfinch
Robin
Common Chaffinch
I took a few artistic liberties with this bird, to make it better fit the colour pallet and look a little brighter. I was worried If I kept the wings too dark and dull, they would blend in too much with the tree branches. I much prefer the blue wing, although it’s far from scientifically accurate… but when have I ever been concerned with scientific accuracy!
Goldcrest
All the finished birds
Unfortunately, I don’t have many process pictures of the tree branches being made, but I can assure you It was a very slow and laborious task! You wouldn't think branches would be so hard, they're just brown sticks, but trying to place them in a way which look both realistic and good is so tricky. I actually find trees one of the hardest things to collage as they can look bad so easily, and look bad it did, hence no pictures were taken for a while (when art isn’t going well, the desire to take a picture of it is none existent). I managed to turn things around just in time for my Patreon live stream where I chipped away at the branches some more. If you would like to see me fart about making branches in real time, here’s the link to my live stream. Nothing quite highlights how fiddly collage can be, quite like watching it in real time with no edits!
https://www.youtube.com/live/l67PASoSGIY
I managed to finish this piece the morning after my live stream and It was such a lovely few hours adding on all the final details, which is always my favourite part of any piece. I’m hoping to get a lot of use out of this piece of art. I’ve ordered stickers of my favourite 4 birds to add to my ever growing selection of bird stickers on my shop, as well as turning it in to a print. I’m hoping it will be popular as people love birds, which It handy cause I love making them.
