aceo

A Parliament of Owls

| karlen

Following the ACEO series of winter birds I started last year, I completed another set of art cards featuring owls. Collectively, a group of these birds is called a hoot, or a parliament of owls.

Owls have fascinated and frightened people for centuries – because most of them are nocturnal they were associated with the supernatural. It was common superstition in the olden days that an owl landing on your house was an omen of imminent death. Nowadays, many people see owls as symbols of wisdom and great knowledge. There is so much folklore surrounding owls across different cultures, some of which pertain even to specific species.

To chose five species to illustrate this for this series, I picked ones that were visually distinct, and planned for each painting to have a different color scheme so that the entire set displayed well together. Owls camouflage with their environment so their feathers are just varying degrees of grey, white or brown. Therefore, I had to invent more vibrant versions of them while keeping the colors feeling natural. Here are some preparatory sketches and paintings.

The most difficult part of each painting were the eyes – inaccurate brushstrokes on their avian eyeliner or an off-center pupil made the owl look goofy. These paintings are 2.5″ x 3.5″, so their eyes were tiny – which is why I practiced painting the Eurasian Eagle Owl twice before doing the real one – black and white eye makeup and eyebrows!

Next came the task of researching and writing the short pieces of fact and folklore for the backs of the printed cards. My favorites are Duncan and Flaco.

The whole point of making these art cards is to share my artwork in a portable physical format, so I sent out these Owl cards to my Snail Mail Club members. For the next series I am planning to do songbirds. You can learn more about the monthly subscription below:

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For the first time ever, I brought my bird art cards to the public at a local market event. I was so happy to see that they made people smile and that the extra writing on the back of the cards were appreciated as well.

Framed artwork of the Snowy Owl and Eurasian Eagle Owl
These two owl originals flew off to new art collectors at the Buffalo Makers and Shakers Easter Market.

Thank you to the folks who brought pieces home and also to you for being part of this newsletter.

I would love to know which is your favorite owl or if it’s one that I slept on (in case I decide to make another hoot of owls in the future)!

Snail Mail Club

| karlen

One of the main reasons I create art is to delight others – even if it’s just one other person. I spend hours composing these posts, and that’s because I know those of you that are here genuinely appreciate my work and that means the world to me. I would love to be able to do that more directly, so I’m starting a snail mail club, where members receive a small piece of my artwork in an envelope every month in hopes that it might brighten their day. I will still keep sharing my artwork here though!

This month’s offerings will be my Winter Bird art cards. Each envelope will include 3 random cards, each one embellished by hand with metallic ink. There’s a lot of symbolism and associations with birds that I found interesting and I think including some light reading gives the illustrations context and meaning. I hope distributing these as physical pieces will make the art more fun to look at and share – these are trading cards after all!

As I am still working on these (printing them, mounting them on sturdy cardstock and making them beautiful and sparkly), and am aiming to have them delivered before Christmas for people in the US. There will be separate subscriptions for domestic and international friends. Please join by the 15th of December in order to receive this month’s artwork!

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Thank you for the support and Happy Holidays!

Choir of Birds

| karlen

I got my Christmas artwork done early for the first time ever ~ hurray! In the many years I’ve been making holiday cards, it seems to get harder each time to come up with a new idea without being kitsch or trite. As I write and reflect on my process, I realize new experiences and new memories are made throughout the year, which get added to the well of ideas to draw from; coming up with something didn’t end up being that hard after all. The bottom line for me is always this: tell a story.

Recently while browsing the book section at a store, this book called out to me: The Complete Language of Birds by Randi Minetor. It’s an illustrated compendium containing hundreds of bird species with facts and folklore associated with each – 100% my jam. It was also the last copy there so of course I brought it home.

I leave this book around the house and would read about a random bird whenever the fancy strikes. As I was brainstorming ideas for the Christmas card, I thought of recent conversations with friends about our respective individualities, and hatched this idea: a choir made up of birds – and amongst them, a duck. I specifically chose wintering birds as I thought how each of these plucky birds with their unique traits and behaviors are able to thrive in the cold harsh weather. Ducks actually lay in the snow to keep warm! With a downy woodpecker to keep time, wouldn’t all of their different voices make the most wonderful choir?

This spread from my sketchbook shows my chicken scratches of the concept as well as a series of smaller illustrations that followed.

Of course with watercolor artwork it’s mandatory to do a test run to determine the colors needed and how to mix them. I also tried painting with a natural sponge for the first time. You can see those textures in the background on the bottom right pinkish blobs.

At first I had the idea that the birds next to the mallard would side-eye him in annoyance for being too ducky. But no – I decided he too, is as sonorous as the best of them. Hence that graceful swoop of the neck as he quacks out his lines.

Below is the final 9″ x 12″ illustration done on Fabriano Artistico Cold Press cotton paper. The sponge effects didn’t show up well since I am not as used to this paper, but that may have worked out for the best since too much texture in the background would have been distracting.

Gallery-quality giclée art prints of Choir of Birds are available through Inprnt.

Purchase print here

Completing this piece gave me some momentum so I did a series of ACEOs, which stands for Art Cards, Editions and Originals. ACEOs stemmed off of Artist Trading Cards (ATCs), an idea developed by artist M.Vänçi Stirnemann in 1997. ATCs are meant be traded or given away so another artist Lisa Luree started the ACEO group on eBay to make cards available to collectors. The size of ATCs are based on sports trading cards and may be made with any media as long as they measure 2-1/2″ x 3-1/2″.

I made my first art cards as watercolor commissions at trade shows 15 years ago and decided to pick that up again when a co-worker mentioned that ATCs were making a resurgence. Then again, who really needs an excuse to make their own Pokémon cards? One of my commissions back then was actually a Snorlax!

In the upcoming weeks I will be making a limited run of prints of my winter bird ACEOs, hand-embellished with the sparkly metallic ink as on the originals. As I think about the design on back side of the cards, it might be fun to share the folklore associated with these five birds that I learned from my book.

The finished pieces of artwork here are all available for purchase and I have set up a shop page for them. This is the first time I’m making my original physical pieces for sale online, so my website lacks full functionality as a store; I do not have an “Add to Cart” button, so to purchase multiple pieces, please send me a message so I can make an invoice for you with combined shipping.

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A thousand thanks for your support and for reading! As always feel free to reply – the “donotreply” @ the top is lying.