"Redshanks Waiting" Artwork from Urban Decay

Redshanks, all 46 of them, facing into the breeze and waiting for the tide to turn so their mudflat feeding areas are exposed. Some of them look a bit hungry and impatient to me.

Waders are a common subject for my artwork. Not only are they such great birds but they are also very distinct shapes with long legs, necks and beaks, which always helps them stand out in the backgrounds I use - a squat, rounded badger is a much harder shape to work with! Plus many of the weathered backgrounds I use look just right for the waders' typical coastal habitat.

Mixing light-coloured birds against dark areas and dark-coloured birds against light areas in the same composition is a technique I use a lot. It can play tricks with the eye as we tend to focus on one or the other. For example, our eye starts picking out the light birds but easily overlooks the dark ones. Then suddenly the eye settles on a dark bird and the effect flips to overlooking the light ones. This picture has a good balance between the two so both dark and light stand out well at the same time but I still find myself only looking at one or the other.

This technique also helps a lot by making it easier for the birds (or other animals) to overlap and thereby give a greater sense of depth. The more distant smaller birds then add to that.

As mentioned, there are 46 birds in this picture but actually only 9 different silhouettes which I re-used several times each. They are all quite similar being the same type of bird doing the same thing but if you look carefully you can match some of the outlines as exact copies (although the colour and details filling the bodies will be different).

I tried to create the effect of a natural pattern. All those similar redshank shapes but with variation and not evenly spaced as a man-made design would usually be. Natural spacing somewhere between even and random.

I did wonder about slipping in one bird facing the other way as a light-hearted addition but realised that it would become the focal point of the whole image for anybody who notices it. I think it works better with all the birds as equals.

The background here is a mix of flaking white paint over rusting metal but I love how the staining of the rust has blended the two into each other so well. An urban surface exposed to the elements just like a flock of redshanks!

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