Nightingale part 2- The Birthday Present

The Nightingale part 1
The Nightingale part 3

Continuing my Nightingale series, here is the second illustration. By this point in the story, the boy and the nightingale have become good friends, but then an intruder arrives. For his birthday, the boy is given a cool new singing techno nightingale. He quickly becomes obsessed with his new toy, which never gets tired, never needs feeding or fresh air. The neglected real nightingale flies back to her home in the trees.

When I was first designing this scene, I drew a couple of mechanical nightingales. But then I thought, would one of today's kids, who grow up surrounded by all the latest gadgets, be all that impressed with a mechanical bird? But a holographic bird that could sing - now that would be pretty cool.

For a while I struggled with getting the boy's face right. His face went through so many variations, and some of them are so downright freaky I'm not even going to post them on the internet. But in the end I think I got it right.

Stay tuned for part 3, which contains one of the my most favorite illustrations I've done in a while.