IT'S MINE - CURRAWONGS!

rosalie

How I came up with the design for this artwork

"It’s Mine!" is a large work (A2 size) which I came up with after taking photos through the window on a rainy day ... in the garden, I spied of a group of currawongs visiting the neighbour’s magnolia tree with its maroon pods bursting with orange seeds the size of Smarties.

These glorious currawongs hopped from branch to branch to get into the best position to extract the seeds then daintily plucked them one by one from the pods, all the while being watched and cajoled by other currawongs. I imagined them talking to each other saying “that's mine”, “no mine, mine!”, “keep away, I saw it first”, “it's mine!”.

I used the best of my photos to get their poses and expressions but because of the conditions, the photos were blurred and parts of wings or tails cut off. I conjured those missing details with help from reference photos. I wanted to express the way the shiny black feathers reflect colours and look almost iridescent so I decided to use graphite for the black feathers over colour pencil and stylus work. In fact the four birds represented are actually one bird which seemed more photogenic than the others. I found the “best” photos to use were those of this particular bird in different poses which best represented the flavour and excitement of the currawongs' visit.