Flowers With Bird Watercolour

I'm really proud of this piece of artwork. It's a watercolour collage that I just recently finished - the first of many similar pieces to come!

I wanted a nice piece of original art, specifically for my sidebar, to link to my Twitter. It seems everyone has a blue bird on a brown, curly cue branch and I just wanted to try something different.

Starting off with a small sketch done in felt tip markers, I ended up with pretty much the same layout and colour scheme you see in the finished work.

I then set to work with my watercolours and discovered, kind of by accident, that my felt tip markers were also water soluble. Hmmm, that's an interesting effect I thought. And so my marker pens ended up playing a great role in the finished work as well.

As I completed painting each part of each flower, I then set about carefully cutting out each element, experimenting with their placement before gluing them down permanently. I made one blue bird only, but I made a LOT of flowers, and parts of flowers, before I picked ones that satisfied me and looked good together.

The last part I drew/painted was the sprig of leaves. In my original sketch, the small branch jutting out of the flowers was in the same colour family as the flowers - a cool lavender that sat well in the piece and didn't draw attention to itself. But as things neared completion, I changed my mind and decided to paint the leaves in a more realistic green.

I actually went outside where I live, scissors in hand, in search of the perfect little branch. And I found it right outside my bedroom window! I brought it inside and placed it against my collage, and voila! There it was! I carefully traced the outline of the leaves as I held it firmly against the paper and gave it a nice green wash of colour. Then I set about carefully cutting it out with a scalpel.

Minutes later I was done, and had all my elements ready to be glued down. At the very last minute, I let some of the pieces go. I felt they lead to a cluttered appearance, and I am really happy I was able to edit my work that way. The end result just appears so much cleaner looking.

So, I hope you like my little pop-art masterpiece. It measures approximately 8" X 11", same as a piece of A4 paper. It's now on my small, but soon to be growing portfolio on Flickr and I may eventually offer the image for sale on some goodies I'm working on!