The Ringgo Bird

Someone had asked me this week to create a drawing for him that is inspired by a graphic of a little bird that had music notation coming out of its wings.  I share here with you the stages of evolution of my drawing.  I titled the drawing after the name of the person who requested this drawing, perhaps coming up with my own genre of a musical inspired species of birds.  I had a blast making it!

Stage 1.  

I started by drawing a diagonal treble clef as the bird's body and later came back to it and added the piano keys.  The graphic's bird had the beak small and closed, so I did the opposite, I wanted it to be more aggressive and animated.  I later added flames and fumes projecting out of the Ringgo's beak.  I wanted both head and feet to have some sort of music notation, so the feet turned into music notes bracketed by a duple sign.  On the Ringgo's head I drew a crest made up of a crown-like bracketed quintuplet fixture, as well as tremolo dashes on each of the notes' stems.  

Stage 2. 

I made the eye diamond shaped and angular.  I always like juxtapositions of opposites: in this case, it's the angular eye and beak in contrast to soft long flowy feathers and the rounded treble clef.  Next, I drew the peacock-like tail feather, which inspired me to continue the light and dark striped texture of the rest of the bird's feathers.  I used a cotton ball to do my shading and an eraser for my highlighting.  I then go over the lighted feathers with the darkened cotton ball lightly, in order to blend in the shades some more.

Stage 3: Competed drawing

I use the darkened cotton ball to shade around the edges of the paper.  I wrote the title of the piece over the flames coming out of the bird's mouth, as if the text is a part of that texture.  I chose only a few elements to be in the darkest charcoal shade: the note heads on the crown, the beak, the eye and long eyelash-like wave, and the outline on the left part of the treble clef.  Having only a few elements of the drawing in the darkest shade, gives the observer's eye a focus.

I hope that you've enjoyed my post.  

Stop back at Creationlily from time to time 

to see some of my new creations.

Shades of Blue ~ Tile

My tile in shades of blue was so enjoyable to make.  For a few hours, being out at Artistic Expressions with some of our lovely JAG Air Force spouses, I had the opportunity to decompress from the stresses of the day, forget about everything, and just focus on colors and textures.  It was pretty much art therapy for me.  I made the circles with different sized sponges, and the smallest circles with the back side of the sponge stick.  I started with the largest circles as a backdrop and created several layers of circles of various sizes on top of that.  Next, I will make two more tiles with the same circle theme in two other colors and shades of that color.  Once my set of three tiles is completed, I will hang them vertically as a collection display.

Sea Horses

Sea Horses ~ pastels

Sea Horses is a creation that works in both normal view as well as upside down, because some of the sea horses are suspended upside down.  Try looking at it in both directions.  The sea horses are in bright colorful shades while a backdrop of coral is captured in tones of soft pastels, supporting the highlighted pop of color of its cozy cohabitant.

Solitude

 Solitude ~ pastels

Art is something that has always been an inspiration to me.  At different points in my life, it has been a tremendous means of creative expression.  I have created with art at times when composing at the piano has either needed to put to rest for a bit, or when it is the most easily accessible to me, like when my kids are occupied with a TV show.  I can sneak into the living room and quietly do something creative for a few minutes at a pop.  The vibrant golden color of the character's hair is symbolic of how golden solitude can be, and how we often need solitude in order to feel this vibrancy.  The disproportion of the shape of the eyes however, is symbolic of how solitude without interaction with others can cause us to feel an imbalance in our lives.  We need both solitude and interaction in order to feel fulfilled and complete.

Creations

Clefony a made up word for a symphony of clefs
charcoal pencils



The Rose
charcoal pencils

  Seaweed
Acrylic 

Solitude
Pastels

Music

Acrylic

 

Waiting

Charcoal pencils

Musical plate

Blue
paint on tile

 Hummingbird
colored pencils

At the beach
charcoal pencils

 Deployment

The Kingfisher bird
colored pencils

Who knows what’s next....