Firebird
exemplars: Mid rangeFirebird
exemplars: Mid range
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A believable bird, decoratively attired with blue plumage-like stars out the back of its tail. The eye form and the general shape of the round head tend to give it a very conventional feel and the little chicken feet echo an Easter egg kind of chicken. The stereotype stars and moon floating in a purple sky feel equally predictable. There is no interaction between the bird and the stars. The feet don't feel in anyway powerful. The most careful rendering and blending has gone on in the wing form, although everything has been somewhat halted by being outlined in black. This tidy drawing lacks qualities of occasion and dynamic movement. |
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An attempt at a magical bird form, in the sense that it is non-standard. There is a sense of heat haze around the bird itself where colours have spilled out beyond the boundary of the bird. The bird is located in space through stars and blackness. The pastel is not particularly assured or controlled and colour mixing is tentative. Rainbow coloured stripes are used to suggest a sense of magic, but the tail and the wing seem to separate out from the rest of the body with a consequent loss of unity. It is as though each part has been thought of separately. |
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A very imaginative bird shape presented as something of a monster creature with spines and multiple tails, multiple spiny wings, and specialised mouth parts. The forms fragment into a series of parts. The background in its strongly contrasting black and yellows further tends to break up the drawing with a consequent loss of the sense of integration. The one thing that starts to link the whole body is the use of pink all over. This connecting colour starts to make the picture look like one bird. This firebird is almost incoherent except as a flat design. It does carve up the drawing space into an interesting series of shapes, but it is so carved up that a sense of order is lost. |
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A tentative use of pastel, with no real pressure applied to give solid richness to the colour. Decorative devices of zigzags, spirals and twirls have been used to fill in the form. It is essentially a rendering of a bird that is somewhat magical but doesn't give the feeling of power or a sense of movement or context. Rather, the opportunity has been used to explore decorative space filling within a simple bird form. |
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This is reminiscent of a number of works with its strong symmetrical, almost "gang-patch" symbolism. It is an aerial view looking down. The triple outlining around the outside draws our attention to the edges of the bird but leaves the middle feeling empty and weakened. There is an attempt to define different parts of the body with different textures, and although there are very powerful wing forms that almost look reptilian, the bird is considerably much weakened when we come to the shape of the head and the overall body form. It impresses as something akin to a passive, soft flower rather than some kind of devouring Venus flytrap. So although we have an exciting sense of energy at the edges, this dissipates as we look to into the centre. The whole thing is arranged symmetrically, but this symmetry doesn't render a sense of dynamism. |
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A rather symmetrical quiet bird, with each part of the body decoratively divided into a separate colour bands. There is a sense of solid control in the use of pastel media. While the image may suggest something of power it is not so well developed in terms of its expressiveness and movement. There is no attempt at colour blending, and the composition has very limited central organisation. |