London Pigeon

I still haven't brought my travel sketching kit into work yet after my holiday break, so I used that once-great medium of the ad agency world, the 'Magic Marker' or, Pantone Pen as I always have a set of greys on my desk. In fact I cut my teeth on Magic Markers and they gave me the confidence to try watercolours as they have very similar properties. Both transparent, fluid and require the need to work very fast to avoid unsightly drying 'stains' half-way through a block of colour! Wet-into-wet techiniques apply too. You can't beat a brush and the real thing of course, I was simply using these pens as an alternative to drawing nothing in my lunchour! After scanning in what was essentially a greyscale or monotone image, (the penwork and greys of the bird) I added the 'Thames' water and sandy concrete colour in Photoshop on two seperate transparent layers. Note that I haven't been such a perfectionist and have avoided correcting any overlapping of the two colours or where it goes over the bird's back. I think it adds something, like a mis-registered linocut print ;) The white highlights on the bird's glossy neck were made with an office white correction pen.