Grandma Bird

Made this as an 80th birthday gift for my grandmother. She likes to bird watch, so I decided to go with a classic "bird on flowery branch" motif.





















Easiest way for me to trace the shape of the plaque- paper over plaque over light box.






















The drawing! Not much photoshop tweaking required on this one.






















The drawing backed with graphite and cut to shape, preparing to trace.






















When I have large areas of black in the composition I will usually end up blotting my brush in said black areas. I also usually end up scaring myself a few dozen times because I'll think I've blotted in the wrong area for a second.






















Ink complete! I always do all of the ink first, it doesn't like to go on top of stain.



















My crappy stain brushes like to fall apart. A lot.
















Lookit all them dang 'ol birds! One of them is the color study, if you look closely you'll see I had some trouble deciding what to do with the tail.

Want to know more? Check out my previous process post!