When I prepared stuff for my exhibition of prints and cards in February, I thought this lot would look nice as plain black on white canvases. But in fact they ended up looking sparse and rather forlorn. 
So I decided to add backgrounds and colour. I've been lucky enough to go to India several times and on one trip I stayed at the Neemrana , which is beyond spectacular. There monkeys scamper around the terraces and peacocks nestle in trees so I decided to give my peacock an Indian border. As usual, all you need to do is Google and you have a wealth of amazing designs to choose from and adapt. (Obviously you have to be a bit specific when you Google. If you type in 'Indian borders' you just get loads of flag waving and guards.) I added a tree background and then inked in an ultramarine sky with my lovely Windsor and Newton inks which were a present from my friend Elaine.
Having got into Indian borders, I wanted to do more and decided to embellish the dove with an Indian sky and one of the whales with an Indian ocean.
I had one more whale to do-same design but this one had a digitally printed background, taken from the body of the whale. I wanted him to look different to his fellow whale so I coloured him in, loosely coloured the background and added some silver as he was becoming quite demanding and a bit of a diva :)
The biggest diva though was the owl. Owl has wonky wings but of course we don't discriminate so I gave him the full treatment. I was still into Indian designs so I gave him an Indian style star and moon and they cried out to be silver and gold.Then I inked in a wavy blue background and finally dotted in silver spots to give him a final sheen. Owl has ended up looking like a strange flag but at least he is finished :)
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