Art Deco Pelican

Inside Roz's beautiful Art Deco address book are many wonderful illustrations by designer, Julian Robinson. One of them is a fabulous painting of two girls swimming at the beach with yachts floating in the distance. The diver has such great balance...

This illustration goes perfectly with the antique pelican bookends I found made by Edgar Brandt in the 1930s. He created such gorgeous birds from wrought iron, one pair with dishes or bowls, the other pair drinking from a fountain. I'd love to buy them but its a tad out of my budget! lol :)

Above : I stuck tape down the spine and painted out the address lines with white gesso, leaving the gypsy in the corner.

I then scribbled out bunches of ideas including the pelicans, borders, corner swirls and shells then set to work measuring out where they'd all go. Then I erased it all because Art Deco is all geographic and symmetrical (ish) so I had to at least try to have straight lines!

After drawing in coils and triangles (inspired by an old light fitting), I then adding a bird flying in from the sea on the right, inspired by a lovely wooden bird from a brooch (might have been a frame). Using my new favourite scissors, I cut out the pelicans printed from the 'net... one of each as I was still undecided about which one to use, I love them both!

I painted the background using acrylic paint in a mix of grey with a tinge of blue, leaving the shapes of the bird, ocean and coils.

A dark blue was used to paint in the coils and other elements. After trying to match the original print, I made a saner decision and ignored that it didn't match... "it'll be fine" I said to myself (turns out I was right! not bad hey? lol).

I glued one of the pelicans with the fountain to the page, cutting the "water" to make it shorter, to fit the page.
Where the seas met, I added a zig zag edge / joiner... zig zags are sort of geometric and triangular, therefore in my mind, def Art Deco!

Little boats of black and white sailed into the page along the bottom. Much better than little shells!
Easier to paint too :)
After giving all the blue elements another coat, I used white paint to straighten lines.

Here's a pic of the whole double page spread. The gypsy doesn't look too out of place either, as if she's keeping an eye on it all.

Thanks so much for reading my blog post. Thanks also to Roz for such a challenging but fun project. I hope you like it Roz!

Have a happy creative day!
:)
Jenny