Bird with a gold hat on a ball, salamander, lemon, flowers, birdhouse: Process Post

I had an idea for a bird on a ball with a grid of colors. I wanted the ball to stand out (appear round) with most everything else appearing flat in comparison. I made this idea sketch:

Then I made a similar sketch with pencil on a 14"x17" piece of Bristol 100lb vellum (Utrecht Art Supply) which is my paper of choice recently. It holds water well and pen does not bleed. I used watercolor, gouache, Golden Fluid Acrylics, pencil, Pitt Pen and Sharpie pen for this painting.

I started filling in colors, and adding designs, with no real idea in mind ahead of time except for the bird and the ball. I added a salamander (or whatever that is) and some latticework and flowers and dots and stars. I added a birdhouse and a lemon and some stripes. Of course I've got to throw in some little houses!

At some point I realized the colors were like rays emanating from the lower right corner, so I tried to make each 'ray' its own color. Plus there is that stripe of yellow going from left to right a few inches from the top.

More than anything, it was interesting to watch this evolve, color-wise. I love bright colors, of course, and I love having a flow of color and value across the page. In some ways this composition of color and value reminds me of a quilt I made. I love the colors in that quilt.

And then I finally got around to painting the ball and the bird. I gave him a gold hat!

Plus a few more details, then I went over parts of it with a black pen (a Sharpie fine point as well as a Pitt artist pen (Black 'M' - I think the M stands for the fineness of the tip, but I'm not sure). Here are a few detail photos: