deconstructed flamingo - marker illustration

You know those rare days when you don’t have a client brief or a single deadline? Yeah, one of those unicorn days just happened, and I decided to celebrate it by drawing... for myself... I know! No deep concept, no commission, no purpose other than pure, unapologetic fun. Just me, my markers, and a slightly judgmental pink bird with very long legs.

So I went online for inspo, then went back to one of my favourite styles, the one I like to call my Deconstructed/ Geometric style. It’s that part of my artistic personality that refuses to draw things “normally.” Instead, I break everything down into shapes, lines, and angles until the subject resembles something that might have been assembled by a very artistic mathematician. It’s clean, graphic, and a little bit obsessive (but in a good way). This time, though, I thought I'd try something else for a change, so I've replaced the triangles with soft, curvy lines, and I kind of like the result. Might add it to "style collection".

This flamingo is basically a love letter to form and colour — smooth curves, defined shapes, and a whole lot of pink. Even though I kept a restricted colour palette (pink, purple, orange, blue and green), all the derivative tones still made it look very colourful, which, honestly, I don't mind at all. I wanted it to feel artsy but a little bit cartoonish too (like I always do), just like a real flamingo looks when it’s trying to figure out where to put its second leg. And since I used markers on paper, the process was refreshingly analogue — no Ctrl+Zs this time, no layers, no making the entire page black when filling because I didn't close off all the strokes. Nope, just me, my sketchpad and I, and of course, the risk of ruining everything with one overly ambitious stroke. Spoiler alert: I almost did. But like with every traditional piece, you've got to trust the process. And turn mistakes into "intended" artistic directions.

I also played a bit with AI to see what it can do based on my original artwork; the result is over on my Instagram page, and it's a bit scary, to be honest. I don't know, what do you think?

Sometimes the best ideas come when you stop trying to have one. And you just go with the flow. This flamingo wasn’t planned, but it reminded me why I love this kind of illustration so much — it’s a balance of precision and play. Geometry meets personality. Or, in this case, flamingometry.