The Flight of the Macaws

Designing this piece was challenging due to the shape of the canvas. I had to make sure that the position of the parrots were perfect.

The process of the design required accurate measurements of the client’s space and keeping in time with the theme of the room.

A canvas with such a unique shape was hard to come by, therefore I faced another challenge that I had no experience in - building the canvas myself from scratch.

Starting from choosing the wood for such a large piece meant that I had to order specially kiln dried Pinewood for it not to warp overtime. Putting the angles together, cutting them down precisely for the canvas to sit perfectly on the space. The reason for the shape of the canvas is because it was going to be placed along stairs, the vertical lines would sit at a 90 degree angle and the horizontal, at the angle of the stairs.

After building the frame, I had to learn how to stretch a canvas, prime it and make sure there are no imperfections on the surface. Issues that I was concerned about was how taute the canvas was so there were no dents when I would come to paint on it. This required the canvas to be restretched twice in order for all corners to not have any pleats.

Once the canvas was primed with 3 coats, and sanding in between to get a smooth but not too smooth surface, it was ready.

I first started with the background by using diagonal brush strokes with blue paint. As the canvas was so large, I had to paint at an angle, having the canvas sit on the long bottom side. Then I would sketch the parrots with white chalk for it to be visible enough to see the outline. Finally I would start painting the parrots which took me about 4 weeks.