When designer of Birds of Play Lily Wuerth started drawing the first bird of prey in this series, the California Condor, she was not expecting what this project would become 52 birds later. As a full-time chemical engineering student, she didn’t think she would be able to find the time to illustrate an entire deck of cards. However, she had underestimated her love of drawing birds. With the final pen stroke on her peregrine falcon portrait, after over 350 hours of drawing (often during class lectures) she completed the Birds of Play Deck!
Initial Sketch: Each bird of prey portrait starts with an initial sketch. Lily typically uses a sketching pencil tool to lay down an outline of the bird's shape and important features. She frequently makes use of tools to select and resize certain parts of the bird to ensure they are proportionate and correctly positioned. The initial sketch provides the foundation of the portrait and all future layers and details are overlaid on top of it.
Line Work: After the initial sketch comes the line work. Line work refers to the process of inking over the initial sketch to make the final lines more distinct. Lily will meticulously draw and redraw her lines to achieve the desired shape of the raptor, especially its wings and feathers.
Detailing: The detailing is the final step of putting together each portrait. Every one of Lily's raptors is illustrated at a very high resolution (usually over 3000 x 5000 pixels) which allows for very precise detailing. You can see all of digital versions of Lily's final portraits here on our website, so feel free to zoom in and enjoy every one of those pixels!
After finishing 52 individual portraits of these raptors, Lily's work was still far from over. After so long drawing birds, she wanted a bit of a break. Instead, she had some fun drawing her dogs, Juno and Pepper, very well disguised as birds themselves. They managed to sneak into the Birds of Play deck as our jokers.
Next came designing the beautiful scenes that can be seen on the back of every card. They feature intricate designs of interlocking brambles interspersed with small bird skulls, feathers, and elegantly posed falcons. Designing this took longer than any individual raptor. The level of detail is truly incredible and due to the technological limitations of printing (and the human eye), the minute and complex patterns can't even be fully seen on each card. I highly recommend zooming in and fully appreciating Lily's attention to detail on this particular work.
Lily even took the time to design every border and letter that can be seen on the cards by hand. Lily learned how to design her own font, which is used on every card to display the common and scientific names of each bird of play.
Through Lily’s creative journey, her best friend and partner, Luke Braun, supported her all the way. When she completed her deck, he was determined to learn how to code websites from scratch to make a site for Birds of Play. In a matter of weeks, birdsofplay.org was up and running! A hobby photographer, Luke took all the photos for the Kickstarter and website, while enduring the brutal NC humidity.
Luke and Lily are determined to have a positive impact with the sale of their deck. They want to protect not only the beautiful birds featured in their project, but also the people they inspire. Therefore, they decided to donate the proceeds of Birds of Play to the North Carolina Environmental Justice Network (NCEJN), a grassroots coalition committed to including low income communities in environmental and climate action.
Lily and Luke are excited to present Birds of Play and hope you can join them in celebrating the beauty of nature and community! We are so thankful to our families for their support in making Birds of Play a reality. Special thanks to Milena and Andrea Wuerth for their editing expertise, Herbert Struemper for his critical eye, and Bob and Susan Braun for their business and accounting advice!
