25/03/2025
Big news!! I'm in an exhibition 😊
This beautiful blue boy, a long with a several other pieces of mine will be in the Bird Stories exhibition at .art.gallery in Newcastle. I'll be exhibiting alongside the incredible Irene Manion , Ellen King , and Jenny Elks .
We're having an opening event on 3 May from 3-6pm, including a fashion parade of some of Ellen's beautiful wearable pieces! Please pop by if you can and say hi! Details are on the second slide.
But back to this boy - when I first came up with the idea to combine cyanotyopes with stippling, of course a Satin Bowerbird was the first bird that sprang to mind, and I'm so happy I've finally managed to do him justice - though I still have more ideas yet to come!! A description of the process is below.
Thanks to for letting me use his stunning photo as a reference 🙏
1 - I painted a layer of cyanotype photosensitive solution onto watercolour paper where I wanted the blue colouration to appear.
2 - After drying overnight, I exposed the paper using a handmade negative with stippling. Where the dots appear on the negative show up as white dots after developing the print.
3 - After developing and drying the print, I added black stippling with archival ink over the top to add detail and darker areas, and add features outside of the blue areas (feet, stick.
4 - and lastly some watercolour to add some colour to his eye, beak, feet and stick 😊
