Assignment 4: Composition 2

The next day, as I was on my morning walk, I was thinking more about visual hierarchies. I concluded that I had become too anxious about trees, when they have only a supporting role to play. I resolved to go back to my dawn chorus idea and stop worrying about trees. The birds are what it’s all about!

I decided that I would choose the blackbird as my central image. For one thing, it’s my favourite bird. Perhaps more relevantly, it’s a bird that most people would recognise so it’s an easy way into the idea of going on a walk and being told about the song of other birds. Also, the blackbird is usually the one to begin the dawn chorus each morning, often when it’s still dark. Lastly, Mr Blackbird likes to fly right to the top of the tree to sing his song - so not much need to draw trees!

I decided that this would be a drawing. I don’t have any of my own photos of blackbirds in a tree, so I couldn’t use a photo. I considered a collage, but felt that this demographic (largely 50+ members of walking groups) would probably respond more to a drawing than a collage, and probably something fairly true to life. 

I looked at lots of images of blackbirds online and printed a few. I also printed some of my dawn photos to get a sense of the light - the photos of blackbirds mostly had blue daytime skies. I also searched to see if I could find a musical notation of a blackbird song. I printed what I found, thinking I may run a line of music through the background. I stuck all these onto a moodboard and started to think about colours. 

Initially I worked in the top right hand corner, matching colours with my mondeluz pencils, which are the ones I use most. I then tried with the Inktense pencils. It’s not always easy to know what colours they will make when water is added. Some layers have surprises in them! At some stage I will make a comprehensive chart of the individual colours and common combinations so that I can work this out more accurately. I tried a little sketch with the mondeluz pencils and added water. I’ve always simply used them as pencils so I wanted to check out how they work as watercolour. I preferred my little sketch before I did that.

Then I went on to work a bit on the composition. I drew a number of thumbnails. Straight away I saw that the bird image needs to be at the top. The blackbird will always choose the highest point to sing his song. I also felt that the portrait orientation worked best, for the same reason. I did a couple of line drawings of the two compositions I thought worked best, then went on to create a colour sketch using the colours I identified on my moodboard. At that point I chose a black or very dark grey background. On reflection, I’m going to try it on a very dark green background when I take my drawing into Photoshop to add the background and text. I think green will appeal more to the demographic, who are more interested in nature than arty black posters. I will at least try it and see if dark green works.