WOYWW #289: Quirky Doodle Birds

Thank you for visiting my desk today courtesy of an international desk hop organized by Julia Dunnit on the Stamping Ground. Hope your week is going as well as mine!

 My desk

Here's a photo of my desk/dining table in all its messy glory just after I finished my latest project. Since then, I'm happy to report, I've managed to clear my work space, so it's ready to take me on another creative adventure. Let me quickly show you around:

1. My current project is an accordion booklet with quirky bird illustrations (more about this later)
2. My sketchbook with sketches of quirky birds to draw inspiration from
3. Have you ever dipped your brush in your drink instead of the jar of water? I keep doing that!
4. You may have seen these pots on my desk before. They're empty face cream pots that I filled with gesso and gel medium. This way, the large containers won't dry out - I refill these little pots when they are empty. It works really well - just make sure you label them so you don't accidentally put gel medium on your face!

The other bits and pieces you can see were all used for the Quirky Birds project: acrylic paints, water-soluble wax crayons, spray inks and lots of pens and paint markers.

 Quirky Doodle Birds

A couple of weeks ago I signed up for a bunch of self-study mini classes offered by Tamara Laporte of Willowing Arts. Quirky birds is one of them. I think it was originally part of LifeBook 2013. The lesson walks you through the steps of creating an accordion style booklet with a colourful background and some quirky birds for decoration, complete with journalling. Tam gives you some pointers about the characteristics of these whimsical creatures, which leaves you with a lot of freedom to create your own guys. I've also changed the format a bit (not on purpose but by accident - I cut the paper the wrong way) - but it worked out perfectly in the end!

The background is done with spray inks and water-soluble crayons. The birds are then drawn on the background and coloured with acrylics and crayons and finished off with some doodle patterns. The quote I chose is really relevant to me right now. It has to do with courage and faith:

"Sometimes you just have to take the leap and build your wings on the way down" 

by Kobi Yamada

Here are some photos of the accordion book. It's not finished yet - I need to complete the other side as well, but for now I'm all quirked out, so I'll put it aside for a while and do something else. Hope you like my quirky guys and are inspired to create some of your own! Thanks for visiting!

The background was done with stencils and spray inks

This one's my favourite!

But I like this one too!

And this!

The book will be folded like this.