Next entry in my Bird Omens series, we have the Antichrist himself in Adam, with his friends Brian, Wensleydale, and Pepper — aka The Them. It was an extremely deliberate choice to have the kids all as pigeons as it is a very big dichotomy to the Death & the Horsepeople who are all birds of prey.
Adam is a Nicobar Pigeon, our closest Dodo relative and just a fancy thing because they have the most amazing feathers. Brian is a Polish Helmet Pigeon, Pepper is a Danish Suabian Pigeon, and finally, Wensleydale is a South-German Monk. I chose them for the colour dichotomy to be perfectly honest; all of them use three variants of grey (warm/cool/toner) and meet in the middle with Wensleydale being iridescent like Adam.
I made a really deliberate choice in the halo for this one with Adam — his powers are so immense that they defy all other celestials, but he has a guiding hand on either wing lending backup…
(Crowley and Aziraphale’s halo colours were deliberate just for this — no others in the series will or have gold/silver.)
This one was a behemoth to finish and took me an entire week, partially due to health, but also just due to the intensity of it. Thank you again to my dear @kyuofcosmic for the suggestion of a Nicobar for Adam, your birds have challenged me in this project in wonderful ways, and a big thank you to @pony-farts for being a compositional aid as well when I was trying to balance it.
Just two more entries left in these main pieces, with Shadwell & Madame Tracy, and Death & Horsepeople to go!
This one is a beast of a thing - have a crapton of WIP shots.
I can render it now that I’ve got everything else done inking wise; also started the base sketch for the mirror to this piece today too. Bless Bird Omens I am just in love with drawing again ;w;
Some more prelims - working out Death and Adam in the first and really loving the designs of both. Death is a harpy eagle with a fair few bones exposed like the entire skull, and the really cool way their feathers work make for a cowl/hood sort of look?
As with my prior post, Adam is a Nicobar Pigeon and I’m going to love rendering all those rainbows compared to the stark white/grey/black Death is.
Death is also going to be abusing how massive they are in their piece and will be going beyond the page because death is rather much everywhere and I just wanna draw stupid big wings that have a lot of details I have to render.
Got my prelim done for Adam and the Them. Just have to move Brian when I’m transferring (and fix his size, but that’s why sketches are sketches) to make the symmetry work, but I am VERY excited to do this piece. It has heavy blackworrk with its inverse of Anathema and Newt’s background set-up but with Adam’s antichrist halo rippling over the whole thing. It’s red (infernal), gold (Aziraphale), and silver (Crowley) for the celestial guardians who stood with him through the apocalypse.
All of them are pigeons, which is a big counterpart to the Death and the Horsepeople mirror piece where they’re *all* birds of prey.
Next entry in my Bird Omens series, we’ve got the Dukes of Hazard(pay): Hastur, Dagon, and Ligur in the form of a black-backed seagull, an egyptian vulture, and a magnificent frigatebird. When I was talking to Kyu about possible bird options we knew Hastur had to be a gull because He Scream At Own Ass, but they suggested that Dagon had to be a fellow “bin chicken” to go with Beez which I LOVED, and Ligur is just fabulous. Frigatebirds have MONSTER BIG wings its amazing.
I wanted to do another mega constellation for the Dukes of Hell to match their Archangel counterparts, and I chose to go with Draco, for its obvious double-connotation; draco/dragon/drakes being able to breathe fire, but also the regality of Dukes.
All are crowned with infernal pearlescent red halos. I also created something I’ve affectionally named ‘Bastard Ink’ — I had pearlescent shellacs that were almost dead from my model kit paints and I thinned them out (heavily, so I didn’t just eat through the paper) into an ink I could use to make Dagon’s scales pop, and rather like its subtle sheen that is pretty amazing in person.
This piece also was an exercise in effectively utilising alternate greys. Also, man, hell should invest in laser printers look at all that running ink from all the leaks… And mould. And heaven knows what else.
There are three (planned) pieces left to go now for this series of Bird Omens: Adam & the Them, The Horse[birds], and Shadwell & Madame Tracy, all with some very fun birds picked for them!
It’s super fun and rewarding doing this series and I’m incredibly honoured by the comments and tags I’ve seen — I hope you all will enjoy the next ones too! All of these are planned to make a single horizontal pan image with how they flow, and I am also looking into possible metallic print runs for some of the individual characters as I’ve had a few people ask about it
Some sketches and my current WIP – onto the Dukes of Hell right now.
I’ve been drawing a lot of Dagon in my work notebooks when I’m stuck waiting for pages to load for finance coding, but I also enjoy how nice the shapes of Aziraphale and Crowley’s faces mesh for bird smooches.
Next entry in my Bird Omens series, we’ve got the Big Guns of the angelic choirs: Michael, Uriel, and Sandalphon. We have a secretary bird, a luzon bleeding heart, and a golden-crowned kinglet respectively. The suggestion to make Sandalphon the absolutely smallest but angriest bird possible came from my dear @kyuofcosmic, and it’s resulted in a lot of tower of babel jokes, along with dustbathing in ashes. He’s also going featherbald and has plated the lining of his beak in silver. No teeth to do a silver cross on, so it’ll do.
I knew I wanted Michael to be a secretary bird as soon as I started the project, given their prowess, but Uriel was a bit harder to match up; Uriel is often given epithets like ‘archangel of salvation’ which made it a conscious choice to use a bird that seemingly looks like its just thriving post stigmata. That and I just love them, they’re a fantastic bird.
As for their constellation(s), I chose Eridanus as a joint constellation instead of individual ones, as it ties into the holy-water aspect rather well, and the archangels do enjoy being quite large and foreboding.
Except for Sandalphon. Sandalphon is 3 ounces of whoop-ass and preens for God.
All are crowned in bronze halos.
(Also please enjoy a bonus shot of my cat deciding she needed to ‘help’ me by stealing pens.)
Adam and the Them, or the mirror piece to this which will feature the Dukes of Hell are up next as both are thumbnailed, just got to do their respective sketches!
Just have to render them now - Sandalphon is … tiny. Like actually. Colouring him is going to be a time. I chose a singular super constellation for the three of them, and will likely do the same with the mirror piece of Hastur/Ligur/Dagon for the hell side.
Next entry in my Bird Omens series, we’ve got our resident witch and witchfinder — Anathema and Newton.
I knew out the gate I’d want to make Anathema a crow when I started this series, friendly familiars to witches and all, but it also meant I could get this wonderful dichotomy going with Newt being an albino raven. Figured the one poor soul who wants to be a computer programmer but always blows computers up would be a pretty special bird!
Given they’re both non-celestials we’ve got no halos, so I opted to do a starry sky with some nebulae using a technique of spraying ink and layering pigment with copic markers over the top. Even broke out the coloured inks for Newt to soften off his lines given his colouration. Anathema’s feathers were built up like Beelzebub — no black used on her at all, only in the background circle, because colour theory is hella cool.
Lots of new tech in this given I’m still re-learning after a few years and very fun to do.
Started on Anathema and Newt tonight for Bird Omens
Last shots are in two different lighting set ups (my room light is very warm but I use a USB white LED for desk at night here when working) Built up some nebulas since copics layer over thicker ink without a problem. Just got Newt to render.
Because he’s an albino raven he’s got the special coloured inks tonight to soften things out. Anathema’s feathers are built up with iridescence refraction colours and toned/layered into “black” where needed. The only actual black used in this outside main inks is the circle in the BG.
A look into the future. Going to have some fun dichotomies - thank you to my darling @kyuofcosmic for helping me find some very fitting birds, including Sandalphon’s… small stature bird mode.
Please enjoy the visual of the angel who took out the Tower of Babel being a tiny puffball of seething rage.
The final entry in my Bird Omens series, we have the wonderful Madame Tracy, and the grouchy Shadwell.
Kyu knew, right away, what bird Shadwell had to be: a Bare-Faced Go-Away Bird. Yes, that is an actual bird. Yes, that means there is a higher classification of go-away-bird. I love ornithology. Madame Tracy is a beautiful Quaker Parrot. They have cute faces, especially when fluffed up, and stunning primary feather colouration on all variants.
This piece fought me the entire way, but especially so when I had masking fail and my one of my ink sprayers explode, which meant I ended up with puddles of white ink seeping onto the line art instead of stars… The leaked white ink created problems of their own (see: very difficult to colour over) but I turned one splotch into a moon and made nebulae out of the rest.
Tracy’s crystal ball was the worst afflicted area which I carefully watered down to remove as much of the ink I could before it could cure fully, but it meant I had a super slippery section that didn’t want to hold colour unless very carefully built up. I made it work and still got the easter-egg in there of it showing one of Aziraphale’s feathers despite the snafu. I managed to supersaturate the ink between her and Shadwell as well where the spill had done its worst with copics for nebulae so I’ll consider it both a save and a technique level up.
I actually took a video of me doing the line transfer from sketch to pre-inks! You can check it out here if you’re curious:
Next entry in my Bird Omens series, we have the horsepeople (or is it horsebird-people now?) of the Apocalypse: Death, Pestilence, Famine, and War. It was an extremely deliberate choice to have them all be birds of prey to counter the fact Adam & The Them are all pigeons in my Bird Omens series. There’s even small reflections of such when you view the pieces together: the crown for Pestilence is more ostentatious, Famine’s scales are tipped the other way, and the sword is on fire — but most of all, a scythe compared to an olive branch is pretty damning.
I knew out the gate I’d want Death to be a Harpy Eagle, they’re a stunning bird and the way their neck feathers actually work made for a nice pseudo-cowl for his skeletal face. Pestilence is a White Hawk, chosen for the spectacular way their wing tips look like they’ve been dunked in ink, which goes well with them as they are very goopy and spew vile things. Famine is a Black-Chested Buzzard Hawk, and of all the birds in the series he has the most unique beak — in that it’s not really a beak, just an assembly of teeth vaguely shaped like a beak; I made his face featherbald for this reason to better suit the visual. Lastly, War is our smallest but feistiest in the form of a Black Faced Hawk, complete with flaming sword; the black faced hawk has a very short tail, and this was my main reason for choosing that as her bird as it meant she could do her fancy sword tricks and not set herself on fire.
This one was a challenge to do, in a very good way, in that I pushed myself to try new things- be it with the colouring, or the fact that five years ago I had no idea how to draw wings even slightly proper and sort of just fudged them together. Death’s wings in particular were a challenge as the patterns on harpy eagles are so bold.
I also managed to kill my 110 Special Black after 12 years of service. Now its freshly refilled and even got a new chisel nib. I also killed my W0 Warm Grey working on Death. Somewhat ironic, that.
Just one to go: Shadwell & Madame Tracy, and then the entire ensemble can be put together!
(Also please enjoy the bonus photo of my cat, Cleocatra, ‘helping’ again since I saw some of y'all’s tags about her.)
Home today due to a big pain spike, so set up a nest in my swanky adjustable chair for a bit today and did something productive to try to keep awake. One of two final pieces in the Bird Omens series, all inked and ready to go for colour now.
Famine is officially nightmare fuel and @ghostlycorvid already loves them, and I know @kyuofcosmic loves goopy-queen Pollution.
I also officially killed my 110 - Special Black doing the blackwork on this. Got some ink ordered and in the post which will hopefully arrive this week so I can fix some patchy areas.
