Scarlet Ibis

possibly a Scarlet Ibis lost in the grey
wilds of Northumberland

Inspired by the museum archive exhibits I decided to spend some time drawing Scarlet Ibis's - Birds are harder then you think to draw... sometimes they just work and other times it is incredibly difficult to capture the shape properly - unless obviously you are particularly good with birds!!!

Yesterday I had a lazy day just making line drawings of Scarlet Ibis - the whole bird, bits of the bird, its feet, its silhouette - getting the curve of the beak was quite challenging, these birds are incredibly elegant - long legged and haughty not only because of their wonderful scarlet plumage but they have a serious regal attitude - and I was looking at different ways to convey this...

We saw lots of ordinary Ibis in Sydney Australia, they were very common just hanging out on the streets by the Botanical gardens - I found them hard to draw then!!

Scarlet Ibis in native greenery

After drawing I picked my favourite and copied it on the copier - our scanner doesn't want to cooperate any more and then started playing with embroidery ideas.  I got a social media reminder about an embroidery workshop which I can't attend as I'm on holiday but it was about birds so further inspired by that and the work seen at Alnmouth Arts Festival I set to with embellishing my line drawings with threads.

Using acrylic paints I placed photocopies to make a transfer of the line drawing - I put them onto heavy unbleached calico, and then I used sewing machine stitching on the first copy - outline the image in black thread - bit like drawing with the machine and then an infill with red cotton.  The second copy I decided to use a more delicate but time consuming hand stitch.  I used several different shades of reds and a dark orange coloured polycotton sewing thread, I put some detail in using black and grey threads   - I like both of them, the machine stitching is much messier more random, and I like the way it suggest a less substantial image. The hand stitched version feels more opulent - set against the greenery of its native environment the plumage seems more feathery and is more dense.  Of course the hand stitching took forever accompanied by a binge watch of Broadwalk Empire - but there are worse ways to spend a rainy July afternoon..