I’m a homeschooling mom and last week as we were reading in my son’s science book, we ran across a photo of a loon. I’ve seen loons before but for some reason the beauty of this aquatic bird with the bold, beautiful black and white pattern on it’s back, struck me. I decided I just had to create mixed media art using a loon as my inspiration.
I started looking for a copyright free images. On Wikipedia, I found an old illustration from 1918 of various kinds of loons.
I liked the image, but only wanted the two common loons. I opened it up in GIMP and desaturated it, and edited it, leaving me with this image- a pair of common loons.
I wrote down some facts about the loons- they lay 2 olive, dark spotted eggs in one clutch. They eat fish, crayfish, frogs, aquatic plants etc. I started thinking it would be cool to use some of their feathers in the art. Black with white dots. Shouldn’t be too hard to make that happen.
Then I began thinking about where I might find some of these items. I went to some second hand stores, specifically to spy out their toys but found nothing. While I was out, I went to a dollar store and found lots of toy frogs and I also bought an eye mask so I could use the feathers that were on it.
I did some online research to figure out the best way for me to color the feathers. Many sites said to use fabric dye but… I had a bright idea. Alcohol ink. Why wouldn’t that work? I’d seen a Youtube video on how to make your own by cutting up pen ink cartridges and putting them in alcohol.
Stay tuned for part two of my Loon assemblage art adventure.