Cockatoo Christmas Cards

I hope everyone had a happy Christmas and is looking forward to the new year!

Here is the third set of Christmas cards I did this year – I would have posted them before Christmas, but just didn't have the time!

For this set it was requested that I include a Carnaby's Cockatoo and Australian christmas tree (Nuytsia floribunda) to represent the parkland next door to the clients, and after a bit of discussion we decided on a style emulating Australian woodcut artist Margaret Preston. She tended to do landscapes and flowers, not birds, so I had to improvise a bit:

Here's a closer look at the cockatoo:

As we were getting them printed by moo.com I did two slightly different cards – the same image, but a different coloured banner and different text – to take advantage of the printfinity system. 

The printing turned out beautifully:

I didn't do an actual woodcut, as I'm not set up for that (I do have some lino cutting tools lurking somewhere, but nothing else, carving out designs gives me a sore wrist =P) so I did it digitally, making sure to distress my linework to give the impression of a slightly less than perfect print transfer. 

Adobe Photoshop CC with a Wacom Intuos 3.