Pole Dancer

Pole Dancer is a scratchboard piece done from one of my own reference photos. I am an avid bird watcher, and blue jays are one of my favorites; I just love how many different shades of blue there are in their feathers. To colorize this piece, I pulled out everything but the kitchen sink from my collection of various blues, using both watercolors and inks. To colorize the jay's feathers, I worked in layers; applying color, then scratching to lighten, and then applying more color. With the exception of some pink at the curve of it's beak, and some violet around the eye and on the beak, the whole piece is done in blues.