Post fest 2 tern, tern, tern

If you missed my previous post, I talk about how I was recuperating from the PA Gourd fest.  It was a great time, but does leave me exhausted afterwards!  In that post, you will see some photos of my "best of show" gourd, Pangur Ban.  I will link to it here.  

In this post, I want to also share with you the other gourd I entered, I call it Tern, Tern, Tern.

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This design actually started on a different gourd.  The shape had a bit of a strange curve on the top that reminded me of a wave, and I thought I could carve it that way.  I was so excited after drawing out all my ideas including lots of seabirds for this that I was just crushed when I cut and cleaned the gourd and not only was it too thin to handle this design, but it broke during the cleaning process.  

So, I just picked a different gourd and it turned out to be a better choice.  Or terned (haha bad pun!) The whole gourd was a sort of a mixed media experiment.  I threw a lot of different art supplies at this!  I was still able to keep my carved wave idea, and I sectioned off the gourd to have pyrography and color.  One strip at the center and the bottom is done with transparent acrylics, while the rest is painted with watercolor over a ground.

The terns themselves are pyrography, with colored pencil, and also inktense to really bring out the white highlights.

My favorite detail on this gourd is not of the birds at all, but the whales that are swimming under them.  

This was an incredibly challenging, yet fun gourd to work on!  It was a bit experimental as I have not done watercolor on a gourd to this level before.  Working watercolor on a ground is a very different from working on paper and takes some getting used to.  But I really love the effects that can be had with this technique.