The Making of "King of the Birds"
How I made a maquette & environment to create a narrative oil painting "from life"
At the time of this post, my painting “King of the Birds” is currently on display at the Breath and the Clay Conference in Winston-Salem. With this piece, I wanted to see if it was possible to create a picture-book-esque painting directly from observation, rather than from a collection of reference photos.
Using maquettes (realistic, handmade models to use as reference) for narrative fine art and illustration work isn’t a new concept. I first got the idea from James Gurney, but it has been used to varying degrees throughout much of art history.
It isn’t that common of a practice today, however. With illustration, the average expected turn-around time for work makes this process highly impractical. My agent told me point blank that if I want to pursue this style of working, I would be hard pressed to find publishers willing to pay for it.
But with the rise of AI, I just feel the need to create work that’s the complete antithesis. So that’s why I’m exploring this highly impractical working method for making picture books.
For this piece in particular, I based it around an old folktale called “How the Wren Became King of the Birds.” You can read my re-telling of that story here:
My painting depicts the wren king at the end of the story in his hollow tree palace, wearing a crown made from scavenged trinkets.
To make this piece, I started with a needle-felted bird. I’ve been working for about a year or so trying to teach myself how to make realistic character models with wool and silk fibers, translucent polymer clay, and soft pastels.
I’m not going to go too far into the technical details or materials here, but I did put together a quick video showing the process, and feel free to ask more detailed questions in the comments or shoot me an email.
From there, I made an environment for the bird, along with a little crown cobbled together from faux-gold charms. This process was probably my favorite. I went to a local park and walked the wooded trails collecting nuts and bark. Then I just super glued it all together along with some natural moss to hopefully make it look like the inside of a hollow tree with a mound of nuts and treasures.
And then the last step was painting. I inserted a little LED light inside the diorama to put a spotlight on the wren, and then drew and painted directly from observation. I did make some slight tweaks to the wren, though. I felt like my sculpting skills weren’t quite up to par yet in making a realistic enough looking bird.
The final painting was oil on board, or more specifically, oil on Arches oil paper mounted to a wood panel to create an archival board. I also used a series of translucent glazes to (hopefully) give the piece added dimensionality and luminosity. And again, if you want any more technical details about this process, feel free to ask
So is this a practical way of working? Absolutely not! At my current working speed, it would take at least a year
and a half to illustrate a standard length picture book using this process. But do I want to try? Absolutely!
In my next post, I plan to share an early draft of a manuscript that I hope to illustrate next. If you’re a paid subscriber, you’ll have access to the full draft!
Ashley, this is absolutely incredible! I am in awe of the talent that God has given you.