Family Tree

My next project was a mosaic for my in-laws in Connecticut. I knew that I wanted it to be based on a family tree. So, I went literal.

After a couple of sketches, I landed on one that I liked. It includes the family tree, a rainbow, and many birds...

While I don't like birds, they do. They have several bird feeders, and so I thought it would be a good way to incorporate a representation of the family members.

I love how the word family came out here.

The background is graduated from light blue at the bottom to a darker blue at the top.  The paper for the rainbow is graduated from white to dark color and is combined with sky blue. If I were to redo the rainbow, I would use more blue and only have a hint of the color.

I think the birds look very happy in the tree.

I love the way that the tree trunk came out. Besides the word 'family' the trunk is my favorite part.

Once I filled in the tree top with green, the birds blended in and so did the 'family.' If I were to do this part again, I would have left the inside of the tree free of leaves, or perhaps only added a few.

Since 'family' was so hard to spot and I had been so proud of it, I wanted to come up with a solution that didn't involve me starting over completely.

As a solution, I went over the strips of paper just next to each letter with a brown chalk pencil. It worked surprisingly well! 

I added some darker green shading to the tree as well.

E is a fan. :)