Illustration Friday - Paisley

This week's 'Illustration Friday' word, "Paisley" came as a surprise to me. Being an element of a certain type of pattern, it at first seemed like an unusual choice, but I've had patterns on my brain lately, so the challenge was a welcome one. Last year I did a couple of Peacock illustrations and while researching those beautiful birds I came across several Indian designs that integrated Peacocks and Paisley patterns. Thinking back on that, I decided I would do my interpretation of a 'Paisley Bird' but I decided I would do it in a children's book illustration style. Before starting, I knew I wanted my illustration to be fanciful and colorful and to be filled with other birds as well.

As I sketched (see image at left), I decided that I would make my Paisley bird a somewhat arrogant snob. I tried to convey this through his pose - one leg raised in a regal stance and his eyes disdainfully closed. I always like to add some humor when possible, so I decided I would have some action going on behind the proud bird's back - unbeknownst to him, another bird is stealing one of his prized tail feathers.

After completing my digital pencil sketch, I started off the painting by choosing a color palette. You can see the original palette that I started off with in this screen shot (click on it to see it enlarged).

After working on it for a while, I decided that the colors for the bird were too dark and I didn't like the magenta colors in combination with the blues, so I began experimenting with new color combinations.  First, I changed the hue and lightened the bird's body and the dark background parts of his tail feathers.

Next, I began to play with the pattern shapes that were inside each tail feather. In the image on the right, you can see my first experiment. It was getting closer to what I envisioned, but now I didn't like the lightness of the small comma shapes at the end of each feather.

After a little more experimentation, I was satisfied with the coloring. My next step was to outline the drawing. I used one of Painter's leaky pens (that I had tweaked in the Brush Designer palette) to outline the image.  Before finishing, I added some texture in the Paisley bird's feathers and additonal flowers on the tree, including one for the little duckling to sniff in the lower left of the image. Also, on a layer beneath the feathers, I added some airbrushed shadows to make the paisley tail feathers 'pop' out a little.