An Eclectic Selection

Another piece for the "people" page of my portfolio book. This is a Papua fellow - a human bird of paradise, you might say. I found his picture in a booklet of trip itineries.



I've done a lot of crows, ravens and black birds. Not because I particularly like them, but because everyone else does. I don't mind them - they're smart, impressive and make a good alarm clock (when on holiday, we only have a few rooks in New Zealand, nothing more dramatic). However, due to various spiritual reasons, everyone seems to love ravens and crows.

So, here is my first decent drawing of one. The first that actually looks like a crow and isn't cute, cuddly and well, wrong. He has a pillbuh in his beak, because he's for a PAT where the choice was "crows or insects" so I went with both.

In my searching I did find someone who had developed a vending machine for crows - when they insert coins into it, they get a reward. It was part of a scheme to make crows useful in areas where they're reviled as pests. The idea was, they'd pick up lost coinage. I wonder how long it would take them to work our how to break into the boxes?


And lastly... I loved the "what's my style" swap and started a couple of threads (one on each forum) for an ongoing "what's my style" challenge. So in this case I have taken on the art of Eraserqueen.

She doesn't usually draw animals, except for me ^^ But I've decided to draw Katta, cos well, that's what I do. In her style, of course. So I've got the bold colours, the somewhat exaggerated features, the swirls. The flowers and trees are directly inspired by her art, I hope she likes it.