Art Project in Process: Crowned Cranes & Dandelions

Sometimes you get an idea in your head that won't stop knocking.......


Some of you know that I love birds, 2 reside in our house, and I can spend hours watching, reading about, and trying to paint these charming creatures.

Lately I've become quite fascinated with the African Crowned Crane, not that there are any around Calgary.

We do have millions of dandelions that will make their presence known in a few short weeks.

So I've been trying to come up with a project combining the two.

Experimented with a bit of pastel resist.....color palettes...

For this version I did a quick sketch  and then went over most of my lines with fine sharpie.


Now the dandelions at the bottom trouble me...to consistent so I'll have to shake that up a bit in future versions.

I added some white pastel over my sharpie lines in the crown and dandelion seed heads.

Most kids have difficulty conserving whites (most adults too!) and masking fluid is too expensive to use in school.
- rubber cement is too smelly..... so pastel and sometimes white crayon is a good alternative. 

Now what's going on with the color palette......
blue sky and green middle ground is too distracting,  so I'm trying a twilight scene.

I added some beads of plain water with the paint brush to add some interest to the background.

"Among Friends"  9 x 12 140 WC Paper

I think I'll be fiddling with this concept/composition for a while.