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.

Musical Display Plate

I made this musical plate during the winter holidays in Seattle Washington 2013.  First I drew a musical abstract image onto drawing paper.  I then traced the drawing with carbon paper, which enabled me to paste it directly onto the plate.  The final step of this stage was to paint the plate.

 

The plate before getting burned

After glossing and burning the plate the colors are rich and vibrant.

You can view it from any angle you choose.

Seaweed

My acrylic paintings are some of my earlier works from around the year 2000.  Seaweed was my first painting done with acrylics.  I started painting it during the time that I was absorbed in my doctoral comprehensive exams, back in 2002, in Music Composition and Theory.   I needed to have a creative outlet that was not the same as the one I was dealing with all day long.  The painting emotes the state of mind that I was in.  The interlocking weeds capture all of the details that I was memorizing and all of the information that was being compressed into my then very busy head.  From the beginning, I naturally liked the idea of a still image with an illusion of being in motion.

Seaweed ~ acrylics

The seaweed interlaces to form a multidimensional denseness.  Silver and copper metallics give a pop of highlight to the more muted tones of beige and lighter purples.  Dark purple gives a contrasting effect by providing a focus to the eye.  The dark purple seaweed intertwines upwards, resembling hands and fingers trying to break out of the interlocking density, unraveling from it and pulling themselves upwards and out into the light.

Clefony

Music - inspired art

Clefony ~ charcoal pencils

  My drawings in charcoal pencils are my latest Creations.

  
 The two additional smaller drawings of Clefony, 
are a couple of the earlier stages of this piece.

 

Completed drawing

CLEFONY

The term Clefony is my made up word for a symphony of clefs.  It is an artistic-inspired word since bass and treble clefs intertwine in this abstract creation.  It is a word-play on the coupling of clef with symphony.  In Clefony, I fuse together non moving images such as the musical clefs, in contrast to moving elements, such as the small music notation.  The treble clef endings resemble bows of the string family, adding a more angular contrast to the roundness of the clefs, as if playing them like they were instruments.  The angled treble clef closest to the top spirals downward, glistening in imitation to the brass wiring of a french horn.  The hook of the top bass clef rounds-off into a pear's seed, hinting at the notion that music and art appeal to many of our senses, causing us to feel more alive.