Macaw With Soursop Seeds, Rice and Mango.

In this instructable we will allude to my mother's seed collection, for which we will make a painting of a macaw using the seed technique, mainly soursop, rice and a mango seed. To make this painting you will have to draw a sketch, use the seeds that you have at your disposal and paste them carefully in the way that I will explain in this tutorial so that it is perfect. Let's grab some supplies and make a seed macaw painting!

Materials

To make this painting you need seeds, specifically in this tutorial we will use the following:

• soursop seeds
• rice seeds
• 1 mango seed

acrylic paintings:

• yellow, orange, blue, green, white, black, purple and beage.

Tools

The required tools are:

• A canvas (I used an 18" x 24" canvas)
• Glue
• Pencil
• Ruler
• sharpie
• Brushes

Before you start adding the seeds, you should draw the sketch that you like best.

An easy way to capture our image on the canvas is by making a guide reticle. For our painting we are going to divide the canvas into 4 equal parts, both vertical and horizontal (in the guide image they are the white lines A -B- C), and we subdivide the parts where we need more detail (in the guide image they are the lines red 1-2-3).

Finally respecting the proportions of the drawing we are drawing the macaw on the canvas.

We will begin by taking a number of seeds and we will always begin to glue them with colbon where the tip of the seed is on the inside and the round part on the outside.

To give our painting a good finish, we are going to overlap the seeds a little on each other.

When we have finished placing the seeds in the beak and neck (in the form of a fan), we are going to let the colbon dry and once dry we are going to give it 2 coats of black paint.

Taking more soursop seeds, we will begin to make the body of the macaw from the bottom of the box inwards. 

To give our painting a good finish, we are going to overlap the seeds a little on each other. 

When we have finished placing the seeds in the body (from the bottom up), we are going to let the colbon dry and we begin to glue the seeds of the wings vertically one on top of the other to give it a feathery appearance, once dry we give it a base blue and the division between the body and the wings we give a black base.

With more soursop seeds we will begin to make the plumage of the head of the macaw. We turn them a little to the right (the tip of the seed to the right and the round shape to the left) forming a kind of arch for the upper plumage.

Then we place a mango seed in the eye.

In general, the rice already has a white hue, so we are going to take advantage of that finish. 

We apply enough colbon in the face area and place the rice on top of it densely. 

Once dry, we lift the painting to remove the excess rice that did not stick.

Now with our dry seeds we are going to paint the head with two base tones, green in one quarter of the area and blue in the other two quarters of the head area.

We will give the body a yellow base. 

Recommendation: always give two coats of paint since soursop seeds have a smooth texture.

We will paint the background of the painting red, so that once we finish placing the seeds in the shape of a fan, it gives us some red hints in the background.

With a Sharpie marker we are going to paint the outline of the eye and the pupil on the mango seed.

then with colored paint: light yellow, light green, black and white, we finish it off.

in the following way:

• light yellow in the part of the sclera.
• light green in the part of the iris.
• black and white details within the iris.

With a fine brush, black paint, and observing the guide image we proceed to make the line corresponding to the black contour that the macaw has on the face, likewise we make a purple color (with blue, red paint and a drop of white), to outline the area under the eye.

With a fine brush, ocher, beige and white paint, and observing the guide image, we proceed to make the lines corresponding to the contour of the beak of the macaw.

We are going to paint the body of the macaw, which is based on yellow, with shades of orange and yellow, doing it in a degraded way to give the plumage of the body a better appearance. 

We start by applying the strong oranges, then we apply lighter oranges and finally we mix it with the yellow, thus finishing the body.

For the head we take paint: black, green, yellow, blue and white.

We start by applying the black in the area closest to the face (rice seeds) and we gradually degrade it with the green paint, to give it a lighter tone, we put a little yellow on it and we play with the different types of green for the crest area.

In the blue base area of ​​the head, blue and white paints will be used to create the respective gradient.

Our beautiful seed painting is complete!

I hope you have enjoyed this way of making a seed painting and will try making one yourself.