Starting on Feathers

Now that the body of the peacock is done, I needed to decide how I wanted to do the feathers. This has not been an easy decision. I did some mock-ups of some different styles to see what I liked.

I have decided on the coloring and fabric to use on the "eyes" of the feathers. I'm using a "peacock" blue, a deep purple, and an orange. The fabrics are mottled and they read as solid. These colors are very close to the actual colors in real peacock feathers. Also in real feathers, the eye is surrounded by a denser green, which I'm representing with striped lime green fabric. The remainder of the feathers are a variety of other green fabrics.

The tan fabric represents the stalks of the feathers, which are prominent in the original picture. The stalks break up the cacophony of greens and adds visual interest.

The first mock-up was the feather with the pointed "eyes" and although I liked it, I wasn't sure it would look right with the straight line construction juxtaposed with the curved lines of the peacock body.










 







The second mock-up had rounded eyes and less of the striped lime green. The rounded eyes look a bit more natural and I thought I liked it better.

I then got a little worried that all the different greens would look too busy and crazy. So I made a third mock-up using one color of green per feather. Each feather would have a different color of green because if all the feathers were made from the same green, it would be boring. Yet, I don't want the feathers to look like stripes, which I fear they might unless I chose colors that really blended well from one to the other.













So, I was really leaning toward rounded eyes with one color per feather. I had put all the mock-ups on the design wall and left the room to do some chores. When I returned, I looked at it again and totally changed my mind. I now prefer the pointed eyes and multi-greens. The pointed eyes show much more of the peacock blue color, and the stylized eyes do not detract from the body of the peacock. In fact when all is said and done, it may actually enhance it. We're going to find out!