How to turn Scrolls into Peacocks

Have you noticed all the peacocks in style lately? They’re popping up everywhere . . .

 

wedsmack.favorideas.com

In weddings . . .

bride.ca

nggonzales.blogspot.com

And babies . . .

 

WhatareTheyWearing.com

zazzle.com

I’m lovin’ all the different treatments and styles.

And the more I looked at these scrolls I painted as a sample for the baby girl’s nursery, the more I could see a peacock.

Do you see it? Just follow along!

Here’s the body and the beginning of the ‘tailfeathers’.

Isn’t there a song, shake your tailfeathers? No?

Oh well. Never mind.

Do you see it now?

I didn’t want it to be in-your-face obvious, but still be able to make out the peacock if you looked long enough.

Although at this point no one in the family knew what I was painting.

So I needed to paint another one! I just traced the scrolls onto tissue paper.

Then flipped it over and transferred it.

I started out with pink and decided to switch to orange.

And since I’m an insecure dope (and listened to family members who couldn’t see the peacocks) I decided to add a more ‘distinctive’ peacock feather.

Not distinctive as in . . . well, distinctive.

Distinctive as in distinct.

Which kinda defeated my whole goal of making the peacocks a little hard to make out, I know.

At some point in my life I will actually be secure enough in my work to not listen to what anyone else says and just paint what I want.

But not yet.

So my clever scrolly-thingamajigs are now blobs.

Blobs with a little detail. But still blobs.

UHHH-ohhh. . .

‘Erase’ the blobs or keep going.

Erase?

Keep painting?

I had no idea. So I went for Plan B.

Sharpies. My dear, faithful friends who have never failed me.

Until now.

Uh-oh.

Now what?!?

Now I just have scrolly thing-a-ma-jigs with weird looking blobs that are all outlined.

{gulp} Just bite the bullet and paint it.

Now they’re blobs with thicker outlines.

Maybe I had been looking at it for too long, but it started to grow on me.

Enough to where I declared it Finished.

And didn’t show it to my family, either.

Now – on the slim chance that you might want to paint this yourself, here are the colors I used.

And here’s the line art.

Just don’t ask anyone for their opinion until you’re done painting.

I’m just sayin’ . . .

I still like it better without the feather blobs, but now it’s too late.

Why? Ya gotta come back tomorrow and find out. Plus I’ll tell you what the peacocks are painted on too.