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Today I hung my bird paintings. It is nice to see all that work from the past few months finally on the wall! I got to see some of the other artists' work, and it looks like the Summer Mosaic will be an awesome show! So if you have the chance, check it out. Thirty artists have created 50 pieces of work each. Wow!

The Summer Mosaic Show will be at the  Cedar Arts Center in Corning. It is open for viewing July 16-18. No sales are made during this time. 

VIP RECEPTION - July 19 - $70ea
Enjoy an open bar, hors d’oeuvre, and music, as we open the exhibition. You’ll be among special guests who’ll be the first to make selections from 1,500 six-inch square artworks. Artwork sales begin at 5:30 PM. The first 50 guests receive fun gift-bags. VIP ticket holders are invited to return Friday for the Mosaic Bash

Mosaic Bash - July 20 - $40ea
Experience an evening surrounded by talented artists, inspired artwork, lively dancing, delicious food, and refreshing libations.
Guests are encouraged to purchase remaining artwork from one of thirty regional artists. Food is complimentary and your first beverage is free.

New Moon Sale - July 21 & 22
This event is free and open to the public. Purchase any remaining artwork. All remaining work will be de-installed July 23.

I was there for last year's show and it was pretty amazing to see the artwork fly off the walls as soon as sales started! Sales benefit the Cedar Art Center.
Check here for ticket information.

Done!

Last but not least! The final three of 50 are done! 

Downy woodpecker (from a picture by Petra Glorie).

I had trouble deciding which birds to paint next, until co-worker Mashelle showed me some of her pictures. This one of a starling that had fallen out of a nest was just so cute! She put it back in its nest, so hopefully it all turned out well.

The oriole is such a beautiful bird! This summer I saw one in our yard for the very first time.

All these birds will go the Summer Mosaic show in Corning. They will be part of 1500 pieces of art in the show! I'm looking forward to see what everyone has been working on.

Back to painting!

It's been quiet here for a while! Almost a month since my last blog. Time flies when you're having fun! We were away for a couple of weeks for a drive across the country! It's a big country.... We saw so many beautiful places. I can't wait to get started on all the new ideas for paintings. But for right now I'm still working on birds. A couple of these I did before our trip, but did not post yet, so here they are.

This pink flamingo was in a zoo in the Netherlands that I visited with my friend (she provided the picture). It's not complete without the pink flamingo!

This snow owl is in the Adirondack Wildlife Refuge. We visited there earlier in the year. Check it out when you're in the area!

The nuthatch is from a picture by Petra Glorie. Unfortunately the story of the baby birds did not end well in this case. Nature can be cruel, and predators are everywhere.

My son's girlfriend made the picture of the barn swallows. We stood watching them as the parents flew in and out every few minutes. They were flying like acrobats while catching insects around us on the grass field. They are fast! It was fun to watch those beaks pop open at every prospect of food!

I made some bird pictures while in Yellowstone. They were stuffed birds at the information center, but hey, it works. This magpie was one of them. We did see some life ones. They are common in the Netherlands too. 

I thought I had missed this year's peony bloom, but there were still some blooming when we came back. Since they will not wait till I get around to it I painted one right away. The next day they were pretty much gone. I'm glad I grabbed the chance!

A penguin, a hummingbird, a nest, and two doves

My son loves penguins, and said I needed a penguin in this bird collection, so here it is. I gave him a different background than the zoo where the picture was made. 

I believe this nest was made by a house wren. It was build into some outdoor curtains. House wrens will start building just about anywhere. As time went by the nest sagged more and more. The eggs did hatch, but I am not sure if the birds lived. They were gone one day. The nest was just too open and exposed not to be noticed by predators. 

I have a birdhouse that lost its hanger, so I just set it on the deck next to our kitchen window. It did not take long for 2 house wrens to find it. Every once in a while they serenade us. When the window is open it is like they are singing inside. It was so funny to watch them start building! You would think a twig like this would not go through that small hole in the birdhouse, but they are persistent and get it in there after a few tries. So after seeing this I wanted to paint another wren.

These mourning dove babies sat in a nest under the roof overhang of my parents' shed. They just sat there the whole week I was there, watching everybody come and go. My dad said they are back this year and had another two babies. It does answer the question of why you never see baby pigeons. I guess they like to stay at mom and pops for a long time and being tended to.

The reference picture for this hummingbird was made by Petra Glorie. She makes beautiful bird pictures while attending bird banding sessions. Birds are caught, banded, and released. Besides painting the hummingbird, this was good practice in skin colors!

I'm now in the home stretch of these 50 bird paintings! Down into the single digits. Yeah, getting there! It's a good feeling to see them all together. They are looking good.

Swan, egret, Cooper hawk, and a goose

I find that I enjoy painting swans. I finished a large painting of a couple of swans which I will post later. This swan we saw while on a bike trip in the Netherlands. So beautiful!

An egret from Florida; this one was in a bird sanctuary.

Thanks to my co-worker who rescues birds, in this case this Cooper hawk. He wants to get out of there!

Mama goose is keeping a watchful eye out while the babies discover their world. Geese are everywhere these days.

Kestrel and titmouse

The American Kestrel is a small falcon, beautiful, and colorful. I like how this guy is just looking at you. 

 The titmouse is such a cute little bird. So funny that while I was painting this one a real titmouse sat in front of my studio window on a left over dry coneflower from last year.

Picture credit for both these goes again to Petra Glorie

Two more

The first time I saw a bald eagle I was driving on the freeway and he came flying over. Wow! I was so excited to see this bird! Picture credit for this one goes to Petra Glorie. 

When I had a birdfeeder out the blue jays quickly took over! They were a bit of bullies to the other birds. Beautiful birds though. Once again I found painting the markings on the back tricky.
Jan Peels made the picture I used for this one.

Babies

This duck had a nest in my parents backyard. Their yard is small and fenced in, but it has a lot of greenery for a duck to hide in. My parents saw the duck fly into their yard several times and after some searching found the nest. A couple of weeks later mama duck emerged with seven ducklings. I happened to be visiting at the time and it was so cute to see. My dad even got them some baby duck food, and the little ones swam in the water bowl he set out. A few days later mama duck got very restless and was looking for a way out of the yard. My mom helped guide them to the river through the streets of their village.

These birds were sitting in a nest under our canoe, which was hanging on the outside of the shed. I saw a bird flying under the canoe a few times and went to investigate. I found the nest with eggs, and so decided we would not use the canoe till the babies were grown up. So we did not canoe for about a month! These birds are fly catchers so they are doing good work of catching insects. The are quite the acrobatic too.

"Winter king"

This little wren has a much cooler name in Dutch: winterkoninkje (winter king). Big name for such a little bird, but then again, the song of this bird is so much bigger than its size. Thanks to Andre Jacobs for the picture!

I'm inching my way to the halfway point of 25! I have two more in progress, so I hope to be over the hump tomorrow. Each of these birds has been taking longer than expected. It's a challenge for sure, but in a good way.

Chicadee, cardinal, parrot, and a nest

No bird collection is complete without a little chickadee. This little one is from a picture my niece made at their birdfeeder. 

I gave Mrs. Cardinal her Mr. 

What could these two be talking about?

Meet Basil. Basil is my co-workers' parrot. He likes to sit on her head and pick on her until he gets a treat.

In this next one the bird flew away! I said I would do 50 birds, but I thought it would be fun to throw a nest in there too. This was actually an abandoned nest. I'm not sure who made it.

The next three

It's been a productive week. Three more finished, and two more almost finished. I will show those after I put the finishing touches on them. I can always decide better the next day if I'm happy with it.

In my picture the pelican was sitting on a fish cleaning table on the Huntington Pier in California. He is looking old and faded in the picture. I gave him a bit more color to make him young again, and perched him on a pole. 

This week I felt I had to paint a robin; one morning while taking the dogs out I heard all this bird song. I my sleepy haze it took me moments to register what I was hearing. Robins! It is always a pleasant sound to hear. It means spring is coming. Although the robins might not have expected this cold weather we are having. Hopefully it will soon get warmer and they can start nesting.

In the picture the robin is sitting next to the nest of hungry robin babies by our front door. I painted the baby robins separately weeks ago. Now one parent is here to join them. 

This hawk was one of the paintings that just flowed out of the brush. I like how he came out. The eyes are so intense! Like he is keeping an eye on you! Picture credit goes to Andre Jacobs.

A warbler, a seagull, and a rooster

This little birdy gave me plenty of trouble and I almost wiped him out and forget about him. Those markings on the back! I put it away for a few days and ended up doing several glazes. Picture credit goes to Petra Glorie.

I had fun with the seagull, giving him a nice beach to sit on. In my picture he was sitting on a pole. According to my husband the chips bag is missing in the painting. Isn't that the sad truth, the birds scavenging for people food on the beach.

The bird series is not complete without a chicken. This is Goliath, a rooster we had. He lived a happy life with his hens, and got to be about 9 years old!

Woodpecker, owl, and crow

Here is my next installment of bird pictures! 

This red bellied woodpecker was quite the challenge. Specially getting the white dots on his back. I had to wipe them off and restart several times. In the end I think he came out nice (from a picture by Petra Glorie).

My co-worker Rosie sent me a wonderful picture of a great horned owl. It had flown into her pheasant pen. After catching it she took the picture, and then set it free. She said it was big, but not even full grown yet. How those eyes look at you! I can't help to keep staring back!

I've been working on a finch that just did not want to get out of its ugly stage. In that case it is just better to let it sit for a day and come back to it. So I started a new one. This crow was like it just flowed right out of my brush and came to life! It felt good have one just flow and I'm happy with it (from a picture by Andre Jacobs).

A parrot and a kingfisher

While the snow was falling steadily and everything outside turned white I felt the need for something colorful, so I painted this parrot. As I was going through my unorganized mess of digital pictures, I found one I took at the Bird Kingdom in Niagara Falls years ago. 

I had to look up this bird's name. This is a Rainbow Lorikeet, and is native to Australia. In the picture he was hanging on the cage bars, but I gave him a nicer perch.

This next bird is from a picture by Dutch photographer Andre Jacobs. It is a Common Kingfisher, who lives in Eurasia and Northern Africa. My parents sometimes would see one near their pond looking for its next meal. Always beautiful to see, and at least he could only take the small fish.

A heron, a stork, and a cardinal

These little birds are taking a lot more time than expected. It is very different from the cloud paintings from last year. A cloud can be any shape, but a bird needs to be fairly accurate. So that means adding details with small brushes. I feel like I'm doing a lot of nit-picking. It probably is also because I'm working from pictures where you tend to try to add every little detail. With most of these painting I've started on one day, and finished the next day. 

This heron is from a picture I made while in Florida, but it really could be anywhere. It could be the one fishing in my parent's pond. Even a net over the pond was not much of a deterrent to keep him from taking the fish!

I made the picture of the stork while visiting a flower park in the Netherlands. Storks were almost extinct in the Netherlands, but thanks to preservation efforts they have now made a comeback. They nest on chimneys and structures people put up, and fly back to Africa for the winter. I found a webcam of a stork nest in the Netherlands. Fun to peek at!

In the picture the stork was standing in the grass; I put him on a nest.

This little Mrs Cardinal is from Petra Glorie's picture. I did not change much from the picture in this one. It just seemed the perfect composition the way she is looking at you.
Male cardinals are such a bright speck of color, specially when you see them in the snow, but the ladies are pretty too. That's what this one is saying... "hey, look at me." Or maybe it's "what are you looking at?" She has attitude.
I enjoyed watching a cardinal couple nest in the tree in front of our house last year. Their nest did not look all that well build. They raised two babies in it. I had never before seen how the adults exchange food: the male came flying to the nest, gave the food to the female and she then fed the babies. Fun to see and learning something about their habits!

The beginning of 50 paintings!

Here we go again! I will be painting 50 small paintings for the Summer Mosaic Show at Cedar Arts in Corning. I picked up the 50 panels and sealed them (twice), and gessoed them (three times). That took a while, but it is also a good activity to just zone out and think about what I will be painting on them.

The theme I chose is birds. I have not painted many birds before, but thought this would be a nice subject to do. Birds don't sit still very long, so I will have to use photographs. I have dug through my own collection of pictures, and I have asked a couple of other people for permission to use their photos. I usually try not to use pictures for my paintings, so this will be different. In using the bird pictures I plan on giving them my own twist in the painting, and not copy anything literally.

I figured that if I paint 4 per week it will take 3 months to finish. That's a bit too long for me, so I'll try to do as many as I can while the weather is still cold and we're indoors a lot. In the past two weeks I've done six, but I'm a little late to start blogging about them. This blog post is a bit long. From now on I'll try to keep up with the blog as I finish each piece.

This one was the first one to get finished. I used a picture of Dutch photographer Andre Jacobs. In Dutch this bird is called a "roodborstje," translated as a red breast. I had to look up what these are called in English. It turns out it is a European Robin. I never knew! They are much smaller than their American cousins, and look more like a little chickadee than a robin, except for the orange chest. 

I found painting this little guy a challenge: how do make brown look interesting? At first I was trying to copy all the feather nuances, then in the end I just "fluffed" him up by taking a hard brush to blur the lines. 

The next one finished was the swan, which I actually started before the robin. I did a thin layer of paint for the beak and pasted thick white paint down for the swan's neck. I let that thicken up over a few days, and then I worked the color in. When everything was dry I glazed a bit more paint over it. The picture used was also from Andre Jacobs; I turned the swan the other direction and zoomed in.

 Next, more robins from pictures I made years ago. We have a couple of big evergreens in front of our house. On one hand I would like to see them gone for the mess they make, but on the other hand the birds love these trees and I love watching the birds visit there. Every year a bird nests in them, and that year it was robins. I peeked in their nest every day to follow the progress of the family. It reminded me of my childhood, when one of my favorite things to do was climb trees looking for bird nests. One year I kept a record of a nesting bird, observing and writing down daily what they were doing.
I have painted these robin babies before. In the picture mommy bird sits next to them, but I left her out of this one. There is actually a 4th bird behind the three birds. Amazing how they still fit in the nest. They look very hungy! I did multiple glazes on parts of the picture. I like how that makes makes the oranges glow.

I have about 10 birdhouses hanging around the yard, and it is so much fun to see the birds checking them out. After they decide on where to raise their family I get to watch them fly back and forth, first with twigs, later with food for the babies. The picture for the next painting was a lucky shot. I just have a point and click camera, and happened to click at the right time. I wanted to show movement in this painting, and found this very tricky. I went back to tweak it several times.

The reference photo; without zooming in it is hard to see the bird;

The bluebirds are from photos by Dutch photographer Petra Glorie. Her website and photos I used can be found here. 

Eastern bluebirds are New York's state bird, but I hardly ever see them in our yard. They must not like it here. I once saw several up the street where a neighbor had nesting boxes in a field, so there are some in the area.

For this painting I combined two of Petra's pictures. I liked how the birds were sitting together in the picture, but I wanted to show more than just the male's back, so I used the other picture of the male that shows more of a profile. This one was another big challenge and took the longest yet! By the way, I think it was very thoughtful of Petra to hang the nesting box right above a branch. It is like having a front porch for them.

Today is a snow storm, so while being indoors for most of the day and nowhere to go I thought I might as well do another painting. This is from a picture I made in my hometown which is next to a river. It could have been anywhere of course, since these ducks are everywhere. It's just fun to think that this is a Dutch little ducky. The water was what gave me a hard time. I never did ripples like this, and it was a bit of trial and error to get it right. I think it came out ok. Maybe I have to tone that yellow down a bit, only rubber ducks are that bright, but I kind of like it so I might leave it alone.

                           

While painting I was thinking about how a little thing like this can make such waves...
This is the reference picture I used, so you see it was pretty loosely interpreted.

Thank you for reading!