Behind The Forest Collection

For the past few weeks, my kitchen table has slowly been disappearing underneath pastel sticks, reference photos and a growing collection of little New Zealand birds.

I've been working on something I've wanted to put together for quite a while, and it's finally starting to look like the idea I had in my head.

The Forest Collection.

Four small artworks inspired by some of New Zealand's native birds: the miromiro (tomtit), ruru, titipounamu (rifleman) and kererū.

And soon, I'm going to be giving you the chance to choose one of them as a free print.

But before I get to that, I thought I'd tell you how the collection has been coming together, because it certainly hasn't been a case of sitting down and neatly painting four perfectly coordinated birds.

That would have been far too straightforward.

It started with a little tomtit

The first new painting for the collection was the miromiro.

They're tiny birds, but the males have that wonderful little flash of yellow across their chest, which is where the name A Little Bit of Sunshine came from.

I wanted the painting to feel quiet and soft, with the bird being the focus rather than filling the background with lots of detail.

That painting really became the starting point for how I wanted the whole collection to feel.

Not identical. Not matching in the obvious sense.

Just as though all four birds belonged in the same little world.

Then came the ruru

If the tomtit was the little flash of sunshine, the ruru was always going to have a completely different character.

I've painted ruru before, and I never seem to tire of them. There's something about those enormous eyes staring back at you that makes them very difficult to resist.

This little one became Wide Awake.

Again, I kept the surroundings fairly simple. I wanted enough atmosphere to give you a sense of the forest, without taking anything away from that stare.

And by this point, I could see the beginnings of a collection rather than just a couple of individual paintings.

Finding a place for the kererū

The kererū was a little different because A Place to Pause already existed.

I loved the bird, but when I put the painting beside the newer pieces, something wasn't quite right.

He didn't quite belong.

So out came the pastels again.

Rather than starting from scratch, I've been reworking the background to bring it closer to the softer, quieter feeling that's developed across the collection.

It's one of those things you don't necessarily see when you look at a finished painting. An artwork can work perfectly well on its own, then you put it beside three others and suddenly it becomes very obvious that it didn't get the memo.

The bird hasn't changed.

He's just getting new surroundings.

And then there was one...

The final bird is on my kitchen table as I write this.

A titipounamu, or rifleman, New Zealand's smallest native bird.

And this one has presented a slightly different problem.

By the time I started him, I already knew what The Forest Collection looked like.

I don't want four paintings that look the same. I want four individual artworks, each with their own personality, that somehow still feel as though they belong together.

So that's what I'm working on today.

Pastels are out, reference photos are everywhere, and hopefully by the time you're reading my next update, our fourth little bird will have joined the others.

His name is Gathering.

Why I'm turning them into free prints

This is the part I'm particularly excited about.

I've wanted to find a way for more people to own a little piece of my artwork, including people who might never have bought art before.

So rather than simply releasing The Forest Collection as another set of prints, I'm doing something different.

I'm going to let you choose your favourite and have the A5 print itself for free.

You'll just cover the postage and packaging to get it to you.

I've been working behind the scenes on the whole thing for weeks, from the paintings themselves to print tests, packaging, photographs and the new page where you'll eventually be able to choose your bird.

There have been considerably more decisions involved in giving something away for free than I ever imagined.

But we're nearly there.

Soon you'll be choosing between:

• A Little Bit of Sunshine · Miromiro
• Wide Awake · Ruru
• Gathering · Titipounamu
• A Place to Pause · Kererū

And I love the thought that these little birds that have been taking over my kitchen table will soon start finding their way onto walls around New Zealand.

I'll share all the details very soon. In the meantime, if you haven't already met him, have a nose around the story of the South Island robin, another curious little forest local from the same neck of the bush.

For now, I have one question.

Which one do you think you'd choose?