A new range of NZ bird art prints

At the start of the year I hatched an extremely ambitious plan to release a handful of new art prints every month along with a few original illustrations. I set about gathering inspiration and beginning to illustrate birds with my beloved tiny tubes of gouache, but quickly realised I needed to reassess that goal as the timeframe was extremely unrealistic, to say the least.

Instead I let things unfold organically and settled on releasing a handful of art prints when they’re ready. While I love a deadline and find them really motivating I also wanted to make these new art prints the absolute best they can be, subject of course to my level of skill. Putting a time limit on that would mean I have to compromise on perfecting the illustrations and I didn’t want to cut any corners.

I drew inspiration from vintage illustrations for composition and posture. Although many illustrators draw from taxidermy birds (most of which were killed by their own hand) my approach is much more kind. Whenever I start a new illustration I trawl through my catalog of bird photos, looking for a few that spark something for me, I choose several and create a montage of the photos to create a realistic but interesting pose. Sometimes if I don’t already have a photo that shows the details I need, I will head out with my camera and try to capture exactly what I’m looking for.

Once I’ve got the bird sussed I pair the bird with a relevant perch, I consider how the bird and plant will look together but also make sure they have a relationship in nature. I have done a lot of research this year into native tree and plant identification and found that I absolutely love it, I find the shapes, textures and colours of nature endlessly inspiring. For my tūī illustration I chose to use kawakawa as the perch, it’s such a beautiful distinctive plant with interesting shapes and character.

Several months down the track I have released two batches of art prints - 11 new prints in total - and I could not be more proud of them. I wanted to create illustrations that would be recognisable from a distance with strong silhouettes, intricate details and most importantly show the birds most distinctive features in a thoughtful way.

I’m very proud of the results of my past several months work. The illustrations look just how I envisaged them and I feel they represent the best bird illustrations I can possibly create at this time, of course I’m always evolving. I have just begun working on the illustrations for my 2024 calendars and those birds will become art prints too, so by the end of the year I should have 23 different bird prints available. In the meantime you can find my available art prints in my shop here or by click on the individual images above.