CRANES ARE A SYMBOL OF GOOD LUCK & A LONG LIFE, THEY ARE KNOWN TO GRANT WISHES.
A woman named Sadako Sasaki became ill in hospital with leukemia after being only two kilometres away from the atomic bomb that was dropped in Hiroshima, which had a very low survival rate at the time. She said that a crane is a sacred bird and lives for 100 years, and that if an ill person folds 1000 paper cranes, they will soon get well again, so she decided to do it herself. Sadako folded over 1000 paper cranes and continued to be strong for her family. Unfortunately in 1955, she died.
Many people gathered money to build a monument in her honour and in honour of the many other people who died from the bomb. It is known as the Children's Peace Monument located in the centre of Hiroshima Peace Park, close to the spot the bomb was dropped. The act of folding a crane turned into a national, then international Children's Peace Movement. Children from all around the world send their paper cranes to be put underneath this statue in order to fulfil the wish written on the bottom of it; 'This is our cry, This is our prayer, Peace in the world.'
This is the original 'thumbnail sketch' for the crane piece. I found reference images and drew out a basic idea, labelling it in more detail each time so I had a clear idea in my head. I see a crane as a beautiful & elegant bird, similar to a ballerina, their poses are very striking and unique looking.
I kept the gold leaf 'sun' in the background to continue the link between the pieces and give more depth to the composition. For this piece, I wanted to do something different by adding flowers to the bottom section. Almost like the bird is dancing on a stage like a performer. I was either going to embroid them on fabric then stick them down, or see if I could find some fake flowers to use instead as they would obviously look more realistic & would take a lot less time to do.
REFERENCE IMAGES:
I decided to add red to the head to make it clear its a crane & because the first piece I did of the robin had red on the belly which I think worked really well. The small amount of colour adds slightly more detail to the bird & makes it more distinguishable.
This wing is my favourite part of the bird as there is a lot more smaller details in this part. The layering of string near the 'bone' of the wing works really well. It also looked slightly messy giving a ruffled feather effect.
The feet & legs are another part I really like. They look more bone-like & are very different to the rest of the body of the bird. To me, seeing a filled in structure like this is satisfying & works really well. It balances the piece out a bit more & gives more detail where necessary.
Because I liked the bottom part of the bird so much, I didn't want to ruin it by covering up the legs and feet with the flowers so I tried moving the flowers around the composition to see if there was a better way of organising them.
To stick down the bird, I used blocks of cardboard & stuck them down so the bird is slightly lifted from the board. I think when they are in the frames, being able to see lifted texture & depth makes the piece look more professional. I think the chosen positioning of the flowers works a lot better than the original idea. Instead of being a separate section to the piece, they blend in better in helping frame the central image of the bird. I do wish I could've found fake red flowers for the piece instead as they would have matched better with the red within the head of the crane. I also feel the pop of red would have brightened up the piece a lot more & been more aesthetically pleasing. However, the ones I chose still work reasonably well with the rest of the work, sticking to the softer colours & overall feel of imagery.
Daniel Bland
Daniel Bland is an artist, gilder, & specialist decorator based in Cambridgeshire. He travels all over the UK for domestic & commercial projects, working with a range of high end materials & design styles. He creates many nature based murals, including plants, leaves, birds, trees, & faces. His paintings of birds are what I am particularly interested in.
His composition in this piece with the gold leaf circles in the background with the birds in elegant positions in-front, remind me of my string pieces. The whole idea is very similar, however instead he paints & includes more natural scenery with the long grass at the bottom of the piece. The original mural of this piece includes life-sized cranes, & was painted directly onto a wall in a villa in Cornwall. He actually produced this piece for an episode of Interior Design Masters.
In this piece, I really love the composition of the three cranes, two of which interacting with each other, & the other posed as if its grooming itself. The tall grass connects them all together & makes the gold leaf look even more like a sun. Overall, it looks smooth & I really love the completely flat & smooth gold leaf in the background. This is hard to do as gold leaf is super fragile & delicate, hence why I chose to scrunch mine up & create small gaps. I did try to do it smoothly at first, but this did not work out. I could not get it completely smooth like Daniel Bland did so well, so instead I improvised & changed the style. In my opinion, the smoother effect just did not mix well with the string imagery. String is a very rough & basic media to use, & does not create detailed & realistic images. It is difficult to keep in one shape & place, & smaller details are really difficult to do as string is malleable, however you cant get clean angles & when the string is too short, it sometimes spreads out & separates instead of staying in one thin line.
After seeing Daniel Bland's work, I would like to experiment with paint & gold leaf in future as they seem to look really good together. The two medias blend nicely together. I really like the smoothness of the piece & the soft & well blended look it has. The gold leaf absorbs the light & reflects the room surrounding it, giving the image more depth & bringing the cranes forward making them look less 2D.
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