Ideas . 12" x 18" . 2018
A Capercaillie is a turkey-sized grouse from Sweden to Siberia. Recently, I have been fond of using their large, black tail feathers to depict ravens. I drew the original sketch with the lower wings and the tail as empty cutouts like the rest of the cutout birds on the lower part of the feather. It didn’t look right so I added back the lower wing and tail at an angle from the central shaft. Then placing the bird removed from the biggest cutout at the tip of feather made the piece seem unbalanced so I just put the tail of it in the upper right of the frame instead of the entire bird. This little change makes the entire piece read quite differently.