New Texas State Bird Line Art Drawing

If you've been following my blog you know that earlier this year I did artwork for the 50 state birds and flowers coloring book published by Fox Chapel Publishing. I'm also making some variations of those images to use on products other than coloring pages. I created to variations of the coloring pages already, one for the California state bird and flower image, and one for the North Carolina state bird and flower image.

I had planned on doing the Florida state bird and flower image next but Hurricane Matthew barreling through the state recently I figured the last thing Floridians are interested in at the moment is a coloring page t-shirt. So, out of respect for the victims of this tragic storm, I decided to move away from the east coast and go to Texas.

As I mentioned in previous posts, one of the big advantages of working digitally is to be able to reuse elements of one piece of artwork in another. The state bird of Texas is the mockingbird and the state flower is the lupine, or Texas Bluebonnet. To create a line art image of the Texas state bird and flower, without copying the image used in the coloring book, I took the bird from the coloring page for Tennessee, which also has the mockingbird as its state bird, and the lupine flowers from the Texas image.

Here's the original Tennessee state bird and flower image used in the coloring book.

And here is the original Texas state bird and flower image used in the coloring book.

So I took the mocking bird from the original TN artwork and modified it slightly (tilting his head a bit), and I took the Bluebonnet flowers from the original TX artwork and moved them around to different positions. I then added the text and banner and removed the border. Here is the resulting artwork.

Now, without the border, I am better able to use the image on t-shirts, coffee mugs, and throw pillows. Now, if you have no desire to color these products in yourself, I am in the process of making a color version. So stay tuned for progress on that one!