"Birds of a Feather"

This isn't entirely new, but it is from the past year. All together there are seven pieces, and I designed and put them together for a project during my semester abroad in Antwerp, Belgium. The main idea of the project was to go with the theme "Fact or Fiction," and we basically had free reign from there.

The idea behind this is to go with my fascination with folk lore and myths. Within all those old stories and tales, there's always some sort of lesson to take away, or a trait that identifies with them. Quetzalcoatl, the Mesoamerican deity of the arts, among other things, represents a persons' creativity. The siren is the allure of women, the faery is a child's innocence and belief. Originally, each piece had the word it represented written along one of the upper corners, but it didn't work aesthetically, so I removed them.

It was fun doing the research into the myths, and finding new ways to portray the figures. Lots of initial sketching and drawing came first, just looking up the animals they were based on first. Gotta say, there are some pretty attractive photos of peacocks all over google :)


All together, each piece took roughly between five to seven hours or so, and they're all done in pen and ink washes.