Woodcut walkthrough – Flying swallows

Take a look behind the scenes as I walk you through my process for the creation of my tattoo-inspired flying swallows.

Believe it or not, these beautiful birds were an afterthought after having some wood left over from my Russian dolls! 

When I did decide to make a bird, I was only going to produce one, but once I marked out my template onto the wood, I found if I closely tessellated the template at clever angles I could fit 3 of them on!

Cut, sand and undercoat

Once my birds were mapped out on the wood, I cut each of them out on my trusty scroll saw before sanding. Once sanded, I gave each a rough undercoat front and back.

Design onto each template

Using reference images of real swallows and sailor tattoos, I started making rough sketches inside my sketchbook before refining them on my iPad. Once I was happy with my composition I printed it out at size and transferred it across to my cut-out template. 

Choose colours

As I already had the colour mixed for my Russian Dolls, I reused the same scheme again, avoiding any wasted paint. My only colour to swap out was brown for black.

Varnish

Once each painted layer was down it was time to varnish.