Day 6: Giant Pitta
This is a bird that has a strong personal connection to me. Even though I’ve never seen one in person, when I was younger my family spent many days out in the jungles of South East Asia looking for one.
I had a great time making this collage, and while I think there’s room for improvement, I have to start somewhere! I’m celebrating the small wins, and focusing on the process.
Day 7: Butterfly
The reference photo I used for this showed such a deep black on the wings of the butterfly that I thought I’d try using black paper, even though it wasn’t painted.
I’m really happy with the result – the contrast is great! For the first time I also started experimenting a bit more with the background by changing it a bit and adding my own details. I did also simplify the design a bit.
Day 8: Bird of Paradise Flower
Another new subject matter for me. Again, I was just thrilled to be trying something new. I really enjoyed the process of making it – cutting out a bunch of shapes feels quite daunting until I’m able to finally glue everything down, and an image is created!
There was a lot more trial and error in this collage – I made a bunch of leaves for the background, and then I made the flower… and the flower turned out WAY too big! So then I made different, bigger leaves.
This turned out to be a happy mistake because I made the leaves form the background, which was the first time I had a differently shaped background! Yay for small mistakes for this one!
Day 9: Whale
I had trouble with this one. I’ve tried in the past to distinguish the sea from the sky – or in this case, the deep sea from the surface of the water, as the scene is entirely underwater. At the moment, I can’t seem to make them very different from each other, so it all just looks like the same giant blue thing.
So I must admit I didn’t try to represent both. I played around with pieces of paper, with different textures… for a while, but nothing seemed to work. I need to build my skills in this area first.
I added some crayon detail in the background and on the whale to finish it off, because I thought something was lacking. I’m happy with the result in the end, which is just a bonus 🙂
Day 10: Raffles’s Malkoha
This is a type of bird also found in South East Asia, and it was one of the many birds I saw growing up. This was a collage that was much more about the process of figuring out how to do this bird… I’m not so happy with the outcome again, but I think I just need to keep practicing birds if I’m going to be able to create one I like.
