An homage to Berlioz

I’ve always loved the Berlioz song cycle “Les nuits d'été” and especially the line that goes “Nous irons écouter les merles siffler”, which translates very roughly as “We will go and listen to the blackbirds whistle” (OK, so it sounds better in French!) But it occurred to me that this would be a good subject for one of those panels where a text is combined with a picture of an animal, or in this case of a few birds.

 This is the result. Of course these are the plain black European blackbirds, and not the bright-shouldered American variety! The birds were very quick and easy to do, but the text took me several days to get right. Yes, I know the software can automatically use a standard font, and align text to a curving line, but that method doesn’t really give you enough control over the placement and angle of each individual letter. Also I wanted to use my own handwriting as the text.

Les Merles

One problem with blackbirds as a subject is that they really are totally black with no other colour, and if you make them totally black the way they look, they just become silhouettes, with no structure at all.  So I tried making them with several different kinds of black. The bodies are appliqueed black cotton fabric, the wings are hand-painted black fabric overstitched with black thread, and the tails and shoulders are black stitching. The effect is subtle and doesn't come across well in the scan, but the the birds have a little more structure than they would if they were done with just one kind of black