Original artwork description:

The latest in my new series of bird paintings is of a magpie. There are six bird paintings in total so far. With their distinctive black, white, and blue coloured feathers, magpies are considered one of the most intelligent animals in the world - they can even recognise themselves in the mirror test!

A few magpies regularly visit our London balcony to get food, they always look quite strikingly huge close up. And because everyone knows one magpie is bad luck, I included a second smaller one in the background of this picture - see the fourth photo.

Last year, after installing a bird box on our London flat balcony, I was surprised at the amount of bird visitors we had considering it's a fairly built up city area. I started to sketch birds and a new style of hand-drawn lettering at the same time, when the idea of turning them into a series of poster-like paintings of birds occurred to me.

As with my other paintings, which are usually of food, I've aimed for a bold, graphic style of image rather than realism. Each bird picture also has it's own name in hand-drawn typography at the top, plus a simple background sketch of the usual habitat it can be found in.

It was painted in acrylics and Posca pen on thick high quality A3 paper. It is signed on the back.

PLEASE NOTE: the painting doesn't come framed, but I've taken photos of it in a white A3 frame for display purposes. The final picture shows the other current bird pictures available in my shop, and mocks up what they could all look like together.

Size - standard A3
11.69 x 16.54 inches
29.7 cm x 42 cm
Roughly 1mm thick

Materials used:

Acrylic Paint, Paper, Paintbrush, Posca pen

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