Folk Art Birds

Folk Art Bird, by Brooklynn Peters 

These folk art birds are designed in the style of Scandinavian artist Sanna Annukka. 

Her boldly patterned natural forms include trees, flowers, animals, plants, and birds. 

Annuka's  colorful artwork and illustrations are printed on fabrics, bags, cards, and of course, signed and framed. 

This is a sample of one of her bird designs that we studied prior to creating our own folk art birds. 

Our birds were first designed and drawn on black poster board with a china marker. 

The artists then divided their bird designs into sections and filled each section with a pattern. Using acrylic paint, each pattern was then filled in using a small watercolor brushes.  

The artists were encouraged to use a 'limited palette' in their designs; that is, to be selective in their color choices and to avoid using every color in the rainbow - which is always a common temptation!

The background was then painted using a color that was not used in the bird design, and the birds were outlined once again for better definition and dots of white paint were sometimes added to the patterns. 

Some artists chose not to paint their backgrounds, but to instead leave them black for greater contrast.

 

Our thanks to Small Hands Big Art for this terrific art project idea!