For Venatrix Framboise, Driftwood Brewery’s new addition to their Bird of Prey series of sour beers, we decided to embody the cute-aggressive character of a raspberry in a quirky illustration of a screech owl, her expression equal parts menacing and irresistible. The light-blue of her narrowing eyes glare through finely-rendered red-orange feathers. We chose a name that means “huntress," and gave her a voice in the form of a playful poem, ripe with neologisms in little berry-bursts.
Am the hunt. Under prickle-thickets, grasping raspberry bushels,
peck-picking pucker-sweet fruitlets by the bush-full. Am hunting.
Unripe, ripe, over. All a-screech with red words in the bird-light,
red-light of me. Then thornless in the after-now of no-hunt, plump
and plume, but am huntress, always-ever. Am Venatrix.
Illustrator's Outline Mode. #AllVectorAllTheTime
