Tea-Birds

For better or worse, here are my finished pieces for our club's 3D and 3x3 show.  Or, actually, these are my 3x3 entries - I will be entering several 3D pieces as well.

I'm not particularly happy with these, but at least I finished them.  And even that was in doubt for a while.  As late as the week before the show I considered starting all over again.  But then sanity stepped in!

My start was a good one.  I worked the collage backgrounds on all nine before continuing, and I was very happy with them at that point.  But then I got stuck.  My original concept was to do portraits of teacups over the collage (which has many tea-related elements) but the collage portion was just too strong for that to work.  I glued a piece of torn rice paper over the centers to tone down the collage where it would be directly behind my images - whatever they might turn out to be.  But, although it was an improvement it wasn't much of one.

Finally I came up with the bird concept, which I came to call "tea-birds."  Each bird is interacting with a tag from a tea bag.  The black brushwork outlining around the birds helps them hold their own against the background.  I much prefer working with a brush than with a marker, and it's always good practice.

At least they're colorful and the whimsy is fun.  But definitely not among my best work.