New Mixed Media Painting: LADY BIRD

LADY BIRD. Original Painting (SOLD).
Prints available in my etsy shop.

This painting was one that took a while to evolve and come together. I had her face from the beginning, but kept searching through layers to find the background. It wasn't until I drew a circle in the sky that I thought would become a full moon that the piece came together. 

That moon filled in with the little bird's face. And while I feel like they are visually too close together, the two characters are symbolically one and the same. Once I took a step back, I realized the bird and the lady were representing a merge between my new long-nosed, Snooter characters and my love of painting owls and birds.

And the craziest part is that I'd been looking for book pages to add to her wings and found in my paper collection a screenpplay of Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach. Without thinking, and before the bird had come about, I pasted on the pages. Later I was very happy to find the character's name LADYBIRD front and center, meant to be.

Here's her evolution...

After this shot, I really didn't know where to go with this painting. I was stuck, but I knew I didn't want to completely cover her up. So, I went to work on quite a few other paintings that I'd been recording the process of for my upcoming online painting workshop HOW TO CREATE WHIMSICAL ANIMALS (coming in september & so excited about all of the adorable animals). 

When I got back to working on this piece, the camera was still rolling and I recorded the entire rest of the painting. Here are a few close-ups of the end result... 

LADY BIRD. Original Painting (SOLD).
Prints available in my etsy shop.

The lady and the bird are one, complete character. One could not exist without the other. And both are so ready to take off in flight together and flutter, flutter. If ever you are searching for lightness and deepness of heart, remember to be like the LADY BIRD. 

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ps. if you've been waiting for the right time to paint, now is the perfect moment...both my HOW TO PAINT A GIRL & HOW TO PAINT AN OWL online art classes are now available on-demand as self-study courses! 

Find all of the details, read what past students are saying (and see their gorgeous artwork) & register here.