peacock

a few months ago i developed a series of works based on peacocks. i’d been wanting to develop this work for a while and produced outcomes that included drawing, digital collage and traditional collage. The first piece I worked on was the pink portrait using cut-papers (this is roughly A3 in size), and then produced a second colourway in more realistic peacock hues.

peacocks are often simplified and their faces prettified with the focus on their plumage, but i wanted to work with portraits and thought that they were really quite stern with their faces containing often overlooked details and different textures. This was something I was conscious of when producing these portraits, and the drawing of them that i used to produce greetings cards emphasises their stern qualities even more, i think.

in addition, i worked up digital collage versions of the portraits in 2 colourways. this involved re-drawing them using a fineliner, scanning the drawings, scanning the textures and patterns that i’d used for the traditional collage pieces (i had the forethought to do this before cutting up the painted patterns), and then cutting and pasting the textures in photoshop. i also had in mind that i wanted to produce a full figure paper-cut collage of a peacock. this became quite an arduous, painstaking task because each of the 15 large feathers i produced contained 150-200 separate cuts. i got blisters on my fingers. but it was worth it to produce the larger scale outcome (its approximately 90×42 cm – larger when framed up in the pictures).