Merlin

The piece ‘Merlin’ is of a merlin hawk flying over the Sheeffry Mountains in Co Mayo. The colour palette is limited to earthy shades of green and grey, and the bird is a focal point in the image against an aerial view of the Sherries as a backdrop. The textures are rugged like the terrain.

It is inspired by the poem A Merlin in the Sheeffry by Irish poet Martin Dyar and I drew on influences from some of my favourite 20th-century English artists Eric Ravilious or Bernard Cheese who often depicted rural-themed scenes. I created a variety of textures and combined them digitally to create this illustration.