Omigosh this is gorgeous! I did a triple-take to see if the birds were really made out of the leaves or not. Sooo beautiful..that's a really nice tree too

--
[link]

Dude, thank you very much! Leaf-birds are almost as dumb as real birds. ^_^

I've been kind of obsessed with trees lately. ^_^

--
bob-artist.com

This is stunning.

How did you make the coloring (especially the background) look so much like traditional art?

Beautiful work!! Wonderful details, and you gotta love those birdies! Great colors and texture details...

--
"There is nothing better than a friend,
unless it is a friend with chocolate."
—Charles Dickens

Yay birdies. ^_^ Speaking of which, I love your user icon! Yay male white face cockatiels! Is he yours?

--
bob-artist.com

Aww, thank you so much!

In terms of making it look traditional, I'm still refining my technique... But basically I started by doing some simple, flat watercolor washes, which I scanned in (a couple years ago so I can use them as textures. I add it in as an overlay layer on top of my image. And then underneath the texture, I paint the image digitally in much the same way as I would a traditional watercolor, using multiply layers for each new "wash" or layer of color. I also set my brush to "wet edges" for the first time on this piece, and I liked the result.

I hope that was semi-coherent... But yeah, I'm still trying to improve my technique with each new piece. ^_^

--
bob-artist.com

Yay birdies!

Sierra (the birdie) is mine! And such a cutie! I'm working on an acrylic painting of her...

We've never quite determined the gender, because she (as I call the birdie) is a pied whiteface...the vet opined that she was a female, but was unable to be certain without a genetic test (which we didn't do). While Sierra is fairly vocal, she also "adopted" a part of a plastic toy that she broke (a round broken piece) as an "egg" and played mother hen for a while...(until I removed the toy while she wasn't looking).

--
"There is nothing better than a friend,
unless it is a friend with chocolate."
—Charles Dickens

Ahh, a pied; I didn't realize from the picture. But she is super cute! I love the egg story. ^_^

How old is she? Does she do a lot of hammering on stuff with her beak? How about holding her wings out from her sides while she talks, so they look like a heart shape from the back? Those are male behaviors, so if she's past puberty and still doesn't really do them, the "female" bet is pretty safe. My cockatiel is SUCH a male. And he has a foot fetish. *sigh*

Eek, sorry for all the babble. Whenever I get started talking about birds, this is what happens! ^_^

--
bob-artist.com

I'm kind of thinking she's a he, not that it really matters, because she MOSTLY does male behavior (holding her wings out as she sings) but also sometimes female behavior (there's a bowing sort of motion, different than the "groom the back of neck now!" motion, accompanied by a soft chirp that females supposedly do that she does too). And she (he) is not going to have any babies in the foreseeable future, so it doesn't matter much...

But I've been calling him a she for so long!

Does your macho birdie have a fetish for bird or human feet?

Birds are a great topic of conversation to babble on, except when people who aren't obsessed with birds look at you funny...

--
"There is nothing better than a friend,
unless it is a friend with chocolate."
—Charles Dickens

Hehehe, she sounds a little manly to me.

My Ebo has a fetish for human feet. And also socks and shoes. And towels and fabric, and once a chicken strip. He's a big loser! ^_^ (I love it when birds are losers.)

Oh yeah, I get a lot of people looking at me funny when I start going off about birds!

--
bob-artist.com