What a ‘Visual Sundae!’ Starting with Bird Illustration

Today we are bringing you not only a new talented individual’s work (about bird illustration!) but also a never-ending source of inspiration. (Well…it possible will end one day, but not in the foreseeable future, so we’re fine!) We discovered this artist on an art and design blog called ‘Visual Sundae’ bringing a lovely collection of fresh art, design and assemblage of ideas to the world wide web. Curated by Michael Nun, this website is chock’a’block full of goodies of his choices and will be useful to you creative minds out there too! If you’re really inspired, go that step further and curate your own blog, eh?

Blogs are a great way of archiving solid, interesting material for visual stimulation and act as a reference backlog to awesome ideas when you need them. They also tell a lot about a person and create a collection of all the things you’ve ever found interesting. Bookmarking a page is okay, but it is always helpful (and more fun) to maintain a blog whereby layout can be adjusted, it can be made to look appealing and the navigation is simple! All information is in one place and doesn’t take up any of your hard drive space, as it is an online tool and backed up there! Everyone’s a winner.

Now on to the work…

We really fell in love with these intricate studies of birds, with heaps of fresh watercolour laden upon them and lots of nifty draftsmanship gone into the original bones and structure of the drawings. They are by an artist called Abby Diamond, according to ‘Visual Sundae’ and as you may see, she uses a canvas of good quality, textured watercolour paper- essential if you want the paint to sit the right way on top of your linear drawing and not mess with the ink.

Abby Diamond is a young illustrator from Pennsylvania according to the source and more of her work can be found here. Some of her bird designs have even been commissioned into tattoos for people. Crazy huh? Her blog is entitled ‘Ink, paint and feathers’, which can only mean, she loves inking a variety of birds and splashing them with bright, energetic colour ranges. Ink can be a tricky medium to get the hang of but practice makes perfect with anything and if you have a favourite topic, things can only get better!

We personally like the visual shading and cross-hatching elements of her work that are subtly left exposed under the colour layers. She builds up the juicy form of the birds by starting with lighter, thinner, linear inked lines and building the relationship lines up between the context and the animal’s form. She then progressively adds to the holistic picture by adding etching and mark making, bringing out darker lines with more presence, then finally introduces the watercolour paints. To top it off, small ink splatters and fainter, bleeding water colour patches add a touch of authenticity to the finished pieces and overall a vibrant, lively piece is created. By emphasizing those relationship, circles and form lines, the pieces contain more movement and character. Her work definitely captures the spirit of small spritely, singing birds!

See her blog here.