Although I have spent most of my working life doing and teaching science I have always enjoyed making things and have been watching birds since childhood. For many years I struggled round with a Nikon camera with a 400mm lens taking pictures of birds with mixed success. It took me some time to find an affordable digital camera that had a decent telephoto capability. Initially I used an Olympus bridge camera but last year I acquired a Nikon Coolpix. These cameras have an impressive an telephoto lens and I have enjoyed taking pictures of birds in the UK and elsewhere.
So now I have a large collection of photos of birds. Mostly these live inside my computer, a few get printed and sit in photo albums, some make their way onto Facebook but it seemed to me that there must be a way to convert some of the best pictures into artworks.
One of my art heroes is the artist and printmaker Robert Gilmore. I first met Robert when I belonged to the Reading Ornithology Club and a couple of years ago I visited him in his studio in Norfolk. Robert makes beautiful images, abstracting the essential essence of a bird into a series of linocut blocks. These are then carefully registered and the different blocks printed on top of each other to produce the final image.
I had been using an iPad app called Procreate to make illustrations for a book of children’s verses that I had written. Procreate supports different layers that can be superimposed on each other and it occurred to me that I might be able to emulate Robert's linocut method without the need for a huge printing press.
The final piece of the puzzle was my acquisition of an Apple Pencil. This tool offers unparalleled precision in drawing onto the iPad screen.
I usually start by importing my chosen photograph into Procreate and reducing its opacity, making it transparent so that I can establish the outline of the bird on a separate layer. I often duplicate this outline layer and fill the outline with white. I then add colour and texture on separate layers until I am satisfied with the image. Finally I fill in the background detail, grass, water, mud, rock whatever is needed to produce a pleasing image.
