Our last Kick-About featured as its muse the splendid and colourful costumes of the Mexican chinelos. This week it’s those equally showy performers from the bird of paradise family inspiring this latest collection of new works made in a short time. For all previous editions of The Kick-About click here.
Judy Watson
“Hello Kick-About! I haven’t participated in the longest time. I’ve watched the posts flash by every two weeks. Some of them would have been a challenge indeed, but some of them were right up my alley. I nearly cried to miss ‘Kenojuak Ashevak’. But I haven’t been able to squeeze the Kick-About in… since I seem to have been drawing bird people for the longest time, it couldn’t be a more perfect prompt for a one day session using crayons, pencils and collage. It does occur to me that these pictures are equally suited to the previous Kick-About prompt ‘Chinelos’ and I seem to have blended the two in a sneaky way.”
“I started with the chungus crayons because I was very curious to use them. I had a ball with them. Part of their appeal is the letting go of control that goes with them. As you apply them, the colour changes, so it takes you to unexpected places. And letting go of control is about the best thing you can do if you are taking just one morning out to play with art materials. I started randomly colouring a bird shape and let it form itself as I went along. I soon felt the need of black, which wasn’t in my crayons, so I introduced soft pastels. To give the bird a bit of dynamism I made it hurry forwards looking furtively over its shoulder. Apparently my subconscious was dwelling in the venal world of politics, elections, the patriarchy, and the progress of the Far Right, because my bird was evolving into a pompous creature, over-dressed, clutching at his medal of office whilst walking though a field of smoke and with blood on his feet! My subconscious has opinions, apparently…”
“I think my subconscious was happy to have got him out of its system by this time, so I moved on to these little sketches that I had dashed off as soon as I read the Kick-About prompt earlier. My plan was to overlay digital collage on to them and to make them look like quirky dancers or mummers of some sort. They’re generally much more cheerful. I made a bit of versatile colour and texture to clad them, using soft pastels and Posca pens. I made sure I had both light and dark areas. And then I simply dressed them up in Photoshop without fussing too much. Mission completed!”
“I was just clearing up my art equipment for the day’s activities, and I couldn’t resist one last little go with the Big Chungus, so here are some baby birds of paradise.”
www.judywatson.net /Instagram.com/judywatsonart / facebook.com/judywatsonart
Lewis Punton
“For my return to the creative carnival that is the fabled Kick-About, I turned to my growing interest in reportage illustration in hopes of capturing the movement and eccentric colours of these wonderful creatures as accurately as possible. After finding footage of these feathered fireworks to work from, I took markers, ink, pencils, and pastels to paper and tried to sketch their shapes and tones in real time—resulting in a blur of dancing show-offs!”
Phil Gomm
“So… just a simple impressionistic vibe from me this week, trying to evoke some breezy, feathery displays. This was a simple set up of some feathers on thread hanging in front of some white card close to an open door, to produce some movement and drift.“
Tom Beg
“I set out with the basic intent to take some extremely basic feather-like shapes, and apply some computer-aided duplication and randomness to generate some kind of highly abstract representation of birds-of-paradise, the end result being these swirly vortexes of colour that I’ve tried to present as if they were a bird spreading its feathers.”
X / earthlystranger / vimeo.com/tombeg / tombeg.com
James Randall
“What’s not to like about a bird of paradise? Such a rich pool of characteristics to draw from. I began with the parallel between bird and male human posturing but with no logic to where it would go but the grid I work to and some forest photos. After some intense days of shaping the image into something, it all felt a bit unco and slightly misshaped so I took the end results back to redrawing from first shapes and the second draft is my KA offering.“
Marion Raper
“When I saw that the Kick About was on Birds of Paradise, I immediately became interested to do some artwork. They are so fantastically beautiful with so much striking colour and wonderful plumage. They bring a touch of joy and happiness to the world. Not forgetting the dances that some of them do to attract a mate, which can look so comical and weird. It’s a shame the females are so plain. I was rather disappointed that the sparkle threads and chiffon I added to my painting did not really show up well and it seemed more like Paradise Lost! However, I stuck some material ‘puffs’ on to make it look more exotic and—hey presto—Paradise was regained!“
Kerfe Roig
“I did my usual drawings and research for Draw-A-Bird day (thanks for the inspiration—that mating dance is really quite extraordinary). So I decided to do a collage and deconstruct it into geometric elements for the Kick-About. I love what Mother Nature has done here with this design.”
kblog.blog / methodtwomadness.wordpress.com
Phil Cooper
“I remember looking at pictures of birds-of-paradise when I was a kid, marvelling at the intensity of the colour and the beauty of the feathers. Then I‘d look in the garden and see a few brown sparrows hopping about and go oh, why do I live somewhere so boring! I‘ve gone monochrome with this prompt (as I often do) and tried to simplify the festoons of feathers and jazzy shapes to make a sort of mid-century modern wallpaper design. Not sure why I‘ve gone in this direction, sometimes it just goes its own way. I painted an abstract background, cut out some basic bird shapes from paper and then drew on transparent acrylic sheet which I laid on top. I love how the paint skids around on the plastic sheet, you have to be quick and decisive; not my comfort zone!”
Vanessa Clegg
“Thinking about birds of Paradise, I remembered watching a David Attenborough documentary and being particularly taken with the Bower bird. The male works tirelessly arranging his ‘bower’ and decorating it with leaves and flowers whilst the females gather on a branch to assess progress and decide if he’s up to it in his design prowess! So, thinking a little laterally, I found the drawing of the caged bird which I did ages ago for another Kick-About and decided to use that to hang the ‘man cave’ from. And there he sits in all his glory—music at the ready—dressed to kill and looking for love.. Good luck!”
vanessaclegg.co.uk / vanillaclegg
Charly Skilling
“I think I must have had the ‘Chinelos’ of the last KA still fixed in my head, when I came across a video of the Superb Paradise Bird (what a name to live up to!) strutting his stuff for the ladies. The way this little black bird transforms himself into this fan shape and fluffs up his breast feathers into this amazing turquoise flash is quite incredible. And then he dances. So, with some paint, coloured paper, sticky tape, glue and a hairdryer I created a dancing Paradise Bird…”
Graeme Daly
“Better late than never right!? I wanted to create an environment inspired by the colourful nature of those flamboyant birds, with plantlife and all its surroundings feeling like it’s one and the same. I think I initially found it tough because I was fighting against the vivid colour of the whole piece but leaning into and trusting the process was—as always—the way to make it work and I’m very glad it did!”
@graemedalyart / vimeo.com/graemedaly / linkedin.com/in/graeme-daly / twitter.com/Graeme_Daly / gentlegiant.blog
And jumping from these examples of extraordinary plumage to the extravagant whiskers of George Edgar Ohr—the ‘Mad Potter of Biloxi. See you next time,
Red's Kingdom 
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