I always wonder what birds sing. They seem to do it all the time. But until we invent some form of universal translator device, we will never know. Using this logic, I suppose there's equal chances that a bird is trilling a melodious ode to its mate – or belting out Deep Purple. We just don't know.
Using my old Encyclopedia Of North American Birds for source material, I sketched this western meadowlark portrait with pencils and pen over about two hours on Sunday afternoon. The colour and extras were added in Photoshop layers (a scan of a yellowed newsprint notebook and a JPEG of free sheet music from a Google image search). You can click here for a closer look at the meadowlark detail.
Oh yeah, this week's Illustration Friday theme was song.
21 comments:
Excellent... your bird drawing is super. Good song choice too.
Very clever presentation and I really liked your bird sketches. Nice work!
andrea
Ha! Beautiful illustration! Though I tend to thing that birds are often quoting "Straight Out of Compton" and other NWA hits...
man! jeope that bird illustration is beautiful! like, field guide worthy!
wow!
not to mention the whole freaking clever idea of the illustration!
damn...
i bow to you sir.
and i kick myself for not getting my poster done - i put it off to easy.
That's it Poster by friday!
love this illo a lot!!
This is in my view the pick of the bunch this week. Great job.
Sharp and brilliant western meadowlark!
ah ah !! great idea, and also well done :)
I am truly impressed by the beautiful drawing of the lark, and I love the usual Jeope humor in the illustration. I'm thinking, however, that many of the birds, especially in mating season, are singing country western songs about unfaithful love, being drunk on birdseed, running off with a younger bird, leaving the woman behind with ten chicks to raise, being born a flying bird...you get it. Well done, sir!
Aw, "Straight Outta Compton" would've been funny. Another day, mebbe.
Thanks everyone. Lew, it better be field-guide worthy – I used a field guide to make it! Poster by Friday, dammit!
Excellent meadowlark! That yellow leaps off the page.
great job as usual! i love all the detail you put into your bird drawing. beautiful.
A Sunday afternoon well spent!
LOVE the type! did you do that by hand???
I think it's great you take the time to do these projects. You may have the start of a great book!!
Not by hand, Shannon - though I tried briefly but didn't have time to scan it (scanner's at work). The 'singing' font is a freebie comic-book face called BadaBoom and the 'figure' font is Adobe Caslon.
FREEBIRD!!! sorry, had to do it. Once again Jeope... BEAUTIFUL! And I agree with the comment about he nice type as well!
LOL. Posture doesn't seem to indicate extreme jammin', but maybe you're right.
i love it jeope!
and the new masthead.... keep up this perfection... and people beging to EXPECT things....you know? ;)
I love this! It reminds me of an old Far Side cartoon I saw once, depicting what a man says and what his dog hears. Very funny!
This is so good....I totally wish I had thought of it. :)
LOVE the birdie...Yellow is great!
SMooch,
The TArt
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