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Green Cheek Conure and terrified peanuts

Ah, so I'm back in Largo, FL for the weekend visiting some of our good friends. We've been having a ton of fun... Went to the beach today and we all got deep fried in the sun. We're on a boat watching the BYU football game, so I have a little more time to post than I did last night.
This week my brother had his 25th birthday, so I made him this! He has a so sweet green cheek conure and they are the best of friends. I actually remembered to take in-progess shots, so I'll explain how I did it.... It's basically mixed-media...watercolor, ink pad, sheet music!

First, I sketched out the green cheek conure and the little guys running away. They weren't going to be peanuts initially, but that idea came later.
I masked the bird and the little guys with some frisket....

Then I painted what was going to be the background...
Once the background was dry, I removed the frisket mask with a soft eraser.... This looks pretty awesome at this stage, doesn't it? At this point, I erased the little running dudes because they were stupid-looking.
Next, using a sharpie pen, I addded the feather details and outlines....
I used my watercolors to color in the green cheek conure.
I thought the blue background looked horrendous, so I cut out the bird... Such is the creative process, I guess. I ended up with something much different than I had originally imagined.
Since I needed a canvas base, I decided to reuse an old crappy painting that I hated. How hideous is this thing? What was I thinking?!
So I covered it in that trusty old aged sheet music as a base. It felt good to cover up that old ugly painting and make it into something nice!
After I painted the peanuts, cut em out and pasted them, I decided the birdie needed a little more dimension, so I put some stickyback foam on it before placing it on the canvas...
As a final touch, I rubbed a black inkpad all on the edges. Tada!
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