Birds

I knew exactly what I wanted to do as soon as I saw this week’s Inktober52 prompt: birds. Flocks of starlings are absolutely fascinating to watch; undulating in the air like parts of a larger organism. I wanted to catch the essence of this amorphous phenomenon. I drew a silhouette of a starling, then used Adobe Fresco’s multi-color eye-dropper tool to pick up the bird image. I applied this single image to a hard round variable brush and adjusted the spacing, scatter, and stylus pressure profile so I had a little variation in bird size and spacing, but not too much (the flock is usually not spread over miles, so I didn’t need extreme perspective tricks). I then used my Apple Pencil to draw strokes of flying birds. The background is a photo of this morning’s sunrise.