“Chickadee in Flight”

“Chickadee in Flight”

I love birds and botanicals and chickadees are my favourite bird. So I gave it a try…

Dip pen and Higgins Ink. A tiny bit of white gouache as the tail of the chickadee was not standing out with the black background.

I love working in ink. I was excited about my artwork until the end when I had problems with the bottom portion of the landscape . I wish I had kept it simpler as I had planned. Adding a background after an initial planned sketch/project was probably not the wisest choice. However I needed to learn so I decided to change it and to try more techniques by making the background more complex. I am disappointed that the tail of the bird is kind of lost in the bottom black background but am happy with everything else. I had to go back in with a bit of white gouache and then white gel pen to make it stand out a bit more.

I have included photos of two steps in my process before the finished artwork. I did not trace this bird, but did use a ruler to make sure I had the perspective right. All other elements were added as I went.

Chickadee taken by a local photographer, Black-eyed Susans from my garden, images from unsplash and Pixels? (not sure about mountains and flowers