Deb9 Creations: Birds of a Feather Flock Together!

My sister Sheri turns 60 on February 7....! She had a special Bday gift request from me this year. Her request involved one of her favorite things.....BIRDS! She found a picture of birds on a wire here and asked me to make something using this! Not much to go on but I knew it had to be bright and colorful with lots of her favorite colors, especially ORANGE!

I started off painting the 12 x 12 canvas with Gesso to build up some texture. I mixed mat gel with my orange paint and painted the entire canvas, let it dry and painted it several more times adding a little white to the top to lighten it up.

I cut each bird piece from the original copy and traced them onto scrapbook paper. Deciding on which paper pieces to use was the hardest part of the whole project! After cutting each piece I started laying them out on the canvas. I used the mat gel as my glue and glued the pieces overlapping to add dimension. After the bird pieces were glued down I cut a piece of black twine and laid it underneath the birds and glued it in place and let everything dry. After the twine was dry I punched brown circles out, cut them in half and laid each half over the wire. I pinched the pieces with my tweezers to fold over the twine.....instant bird feet!

Using my brush tip markers I shaded around each bird piece as well as the twine. I used a blender pen to pull the color out to add a shadow. I added some shading to the tops of the birds as well. I added a few highlights with my white gel pen. After everything dried, I added some dimensional shine to several places on the birds head feathers and tail feathers.