Illustration Friday Black and White

This week's Illustration Friday topic is Black and white.
I was in a pattern mood and although i'm sure zebras will be popular this week i still couldn't resist it =) I couldn't really decided which of these two to submit so i've put them both on the same page.

I painted the zebra head in Painter 7 with a white pen on black canvas then took it into Photoshop 5.5, made a new canvas and duplicated and flipped the original zebra.
I decided to add the zebra text and increased the canvas size to give a white border and added the text as 4 layers with the font Stencil. I adjusted the point size slightly to make the square look right.


I also played around with some stylised magpies as i've always liked them and the various bits of traditional rhyme that go with them.

My gran always used to say " Hello Mr Magpie, How's your lady wife today?" when she saw a magpie and i used to know some old folk who would tip their hat when they saw a magpie for luck.
It seems that magpies are connected with rhymes and superstitions all over the world