Cardinal

"Cardinal"

Magazine pages, glue stick

6” x 6”

The subject of my creation is a cardinal bird, with cut out paper from magazines. This shows different shapes and colors throughout the bird. My inquiry question that I'm focusing on throughout the year is, “how can I show the beauty in birds through shape and color,” so on this project I wanted to focus on using bright colors and shapes. Thats why I choose a cardinal bird which has many colors within the feathers. This bird is also specific to Maine, so I have a deeper connection with my piece.

I used Bristol paper, then I cup out shapes of different objects, like trees and rocks from national geographic magazines. I then layered magazine pieces to the image and glued it with a glue stick. I did the background first by using a rock photograph for the back ground and then layering trees on top. I added many different shades of red to create layers of feathers.

I used color in my artwork to express the birds beauty in their feathers. Throughout the background and foreground, there are a variety of different shades shown. In my piece I also showed contrast by using a lighter background to contrast against the colorful birds and dark trees. At first I wanted to create a background full of varies shapes of similar colors, that looked almost blurred out, although this took the attention away from the bird, so I discarded that piece and created a new one. My next steps in this project would be to continue working on the second bird and possibly add more magazine cut outs to layer more colors/shapes on.