Reviewing the birds I have already illustrated I wanted to include a wading bird of some type.
I had taken some photos and footage of flamingos at London Zoo and decided to make that the basis of my illustration. I've been trying to work on adding depth to my backgrounds and that was something I wanted to push in this drawing.
This is "Flamingos at London Zoo" by Ramona Mason on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.
There are a few different types of flamingo, I already have 'fig parrots' for F, which left me with a few options, J James Flamingo or A American or Andean Flamingo.
I was really taken with the chunkier faces of the Jame's flamingo and their bright yellow beaks. The distribution of pink within their feathers creates these streaks of saturation adding more variation in their body colour.
The American Flamingo in contrast is much longer and narrower in the face and neck with less variation in colour.
The Andean Flamingo is closer in appearance to the James Flamingo with a rounder face and yellow beak. They are bigger than the the James Flamingo and their legs are yellow rather than pink.
I decided I would move forward with the James flamingo but using a composition inspired by the flamingos I had seen at the zoo.
I never know how the colours will look until I run the image layers through photoshop to see how the colours pass through one another.
This was the first version. I've been having ongoing issues within my illustrations, a crisis of confidence? I am lacking in that 'gut' feeling that I usually like to follow and I think this is due to many factors but primarily the limited time I have to work on my illustrations. This means that illustrations are completed over the course of a month, with less opportunity to get into a creative headspace.
I have a lot of negative emotions associated with my work. Although I love risograph, illustration and birds (!) the pressure and guilt of not being able to produce work at the speed I want to and yet again, falling behind schedule makes me question my abilities and if I'm cut out for this. When viewing an illustration through this mindset, it's harder to think positively.
I wanted to experiment with changing the colour of the water by decreasing the intensity of the yellow.
I prefer the bluer version as it offers more variation in colour across the entire illustration.
I also experimented with the intensity of the black within the background of the illustration. Although I think I prefer the darker version I also need to consider where the text will sit on the page. The lighter option may work better.
Chittum, L. (2024). Andean Flamingo Phoenicoparrus andinus. [Photograph ] Macaulay Library. Available at: https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/627176359.
McQueen, C. (2019). James’s Flamingo Phoenicoparrus jamesi. [Photograph ] Macaulay Library. Available at: https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/375392911.
Tremblay, L. (2024). American Flamingo Phoenicopterus ruber. [Photograph ] Macaulay Library. Available at: https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/630618001.
