Hummingbird Charm

I created this artwork for my mom as a gift for Mother’s Day this year. I had it printed on a plate (which I thought would be ceramic but turned out to not be ceramic, my mistake) and gave it to her along with a customized card that I also created for her. Unfortunately, the plate broke in transit and I had to reorder so it was too late for Mother’s Day. So, I rewrote the card and they reprinted it for free and shipped me a second plate (also free of charge) and I gave both to my mom for her birthday which was month or so later. She seemed to really like both the card and the plate even though it wasn’t ceramic like I thought it would be. In case you’re wondering, a group of hummingbirds is called a “charm” and thus, that’s where I got the name for this piece.

I rendered this with Superfly with depth of field on. The background is actually a free stock photo that I blurred in photo shop then added to a flat prop and placed behind the birds and feeder prop. The lighting was a simple setup of one “sun” light and a sky dome for some ambient light. Postwork included a lot of touchup to fix some little errors here and there on the birds’ feathers that didn’t look quite smooth enough to me and to fix some serious render errors on the feeder prop. I then used a Photoshop action to give it a creamy vintage look.

• Songbird Remix 2 by Ken Gilliland