I’m not sure if I’m done with it or not. I might add in a few highlights or something at a later date…and will probably finish the reflection in the water.

And here is the new finished version. This one’s color is actually more true to life. It depends on what time of day I take the picture. Daylight is better than artificial light.

I’m not completely done with it. This was my first painting on my new linen boards. I am really liking them. I am considering buying some 3m sticky spray and sticking them to cardboard while I’m working on them. I would get the adjustable stuff.

Also, this figure drawing class is encouraging me to do some more sketching in my spare time. I couldn’t sleep a few days ago, so I did the following little sketch at about 3am.

I have my figure drawing class again tonight. I am looking forward to it despite feeling like I might have a cold coming on.

My only regret on this trip is that I noticed that there was an “endangered amphibians” exhibit at the zoo right before it closed which I wish I had seen. I love painting frogs. Ah well…there is plenty of other great reference photos for painting from this trip…including a couple neat frogs who lived in the reptile exhibit.

In the Quarter

Street Musicians

Interesting Looking Pigeon

Buggy Tour

Street Sign

Street People Dancing to "Thriller"

Evening

Interesting Colors

Audubon Park

Duck

Another Duck, Preening

Pokey Birds (Don't know what they are.)

Squirrel on Trash Can

Audubon Zoo

Flamingos

Straw-Necked Ibis

Radjah Shelduck

Masked Lapwing

Nicobar Pigeon

Don't know this one's name.

Not sure what this one is called.

Bengal Tiger

Cleaning...

Pacing...

Elephant

Flowers

Cormorants

More Cormorants

Pelican

Requisite Aligator

Black Bear

Rhino

Giant Leaf Frog

Panamian Golden Frog

This one is extinct in the wild. : . (

Kori Bustard

Indian Roller

Final Painting: "Unseen Beauty"

The day we went to visit the Lincoln Memorial, we stopped by a “food” stand for some water. I say “food” because most of these types of snacks are not real food. Because of all the litter, a lot of birds were attracted to come and eat little bits. That is where I snapped a lot of my best bird photos from the trip, including the inspiration for this painting, which you can see below. You may be wondering why I feel compelled to paint a bird like the pigeon. I often think of city birds as little volunteers as they are tend to clean up a wide range of the crap people dump. I don’t quite understand why people complain about them, I don’t care if they poop, people throw all their garbage all over the place, how is that better? Also, people dump all their poo and other worse disgusting stuff into nature’s environment; so if little pockets of nature manage to thrive in the city due to more human waste, then good for them!

The other thing that irritates me about pigeon judgement is that they really are gorgeous. Pigeons happen to have amazing colors. So do gulls. And let me tell you, if these birds were endangered, people would travel from the far reaches of the world just to see one! Why is it then, that their common-ness prohibits people from seeing their cool-ness? They come in all difference colors, and many have beautiful iridescent blues and greens in their feathers. Did you even know that about pigeons?

Just remember, you are a human, therefore if you judge a creature based on common-ness and quantity of pooping all over someone else’s environment: you are worse.

With that out of the way, maybe you can look at my painting and photo with some empathy and if you didn’t already, start to see the beauty of a common pigeon.

Before my final work on the pigeon, it looked like the below. My first drawing was a bit off for the shape of the pigeon, below it looks a little more anorexic than the real thing. Other than that, the below looked okay in general, the other primary work was done on the background, which before I finished looked a bit more shallow. Also, I did a bit of important work on the feet. Birds feet can be really tough…

Pigeon Painting at 75% Done Stage

Although I have a number of pigeon photos to choose from, I selected the below photo for it’s luminosity and full frontal pose. I do not always work from photos, but when I do my goal is not to paint photo realism and I use photos as inspiration only. Sometimes the final end up being close to the photo, and sometimes not. This one is somewhat close, but I wanted the little guy to be looking at the viewer as seen in the final.

pigeon photo that inspired the painting

Additionally, I want to note something about painting any subject with shine or iridescence. For some reason, some people seem to want to use shiny paints to try and accomplish these looks. Unfortunately, you can now buy gold, silver and all other kinds of shiny paints: but they don’t work. I have watched other people try this, only to end up with very flat looking colors. You can’t rely on any paint to create depth for you. And shine comes from depth and curve plus light source. Remember, whatever image you are referencing is flat or maybe it is real life, but it would look the same in a good enough photo and photos *never* contain sparkly flakes, and you don’t need them either. It is in fact a great range of flat colors. Your job is to analyze that carefully and try to replicate those color variations. I have seen some artists paint insanely accurate color glass studies, and trust me, they are just using the traditional, non-gimmicky colors. I personally am not awesome at achieving this…yet. But, I know theoretically how to get there, and it takes time and practice, plus a good eye and never attempting to cut corners.

I had thought this painting was finished a couple months ago, but I added to it again a couple days ago. Originally, the background was quite a bit lighter with more blue and green in it. I took this into my painting class and it is a good example of how the useful feedback enhances my mostly finished work. The instructor suggested I glaze the entire background with a darker color but leave some highlights above the bird. This way, there is a nice contrast because the bird is dark on top and light on the bottom, so the background looks nice being dark on the bottom and light on top. I totally agreed with him and am pleased with how it has turned out after the new enhancement.

My final glaze started with predominantly ultramarine with a bit of raw umber. I followed that with a heavy glaze of a predominantly raw umber with a bit of ultramarine mix. At the end, I rubbed out some of the glaze above the bird. I love the colors in the background. This is one of the many reasons why I paint in oil. You just don’t get the depth of color and luminosity with acrylics.

This painting is 6 x 6 inches and is painted on a wooden board and does not yet have an official title. Square shapes tend to be challenging from a compositional stand point, but I think this result worked out well. Composition is one of my most focused considerations when I am selected a subject. It both has to have the right fit and balance, and also be a subject with some personality and emotion. This makes subject selection a bit challenging as I am not inclined to just grab some fruit. Although, every now and then, a very gifted painter can make fruit amazing. I used to real a blog by a guy who did small life paintings that were amazingly creative and inspirational…sadly, he has recently pulled his blog down, but he would do things like paint two pears, one keeled over as if dead with a fork stuck in it, and name it “Hamlet”…he is awesome.

I finally snapped a couple mediocre photos of one of my residential hummies. These two are of the same female who I have named HummyBuddy Part2. The male is the first one I saw this year, and I named him HummyBuddy. I actually don’t name things that much on my own, but Robert always asks me what things are named, so I just make something up, and that’s what came out first. HummyBuddy Part2 is simply because I saw her second and she used to be more shy than the male. However, since then she is easier to get photos of because she will come around more when I’m outside.

While I was out somewhat patiently waiting for the hummies to come around I got a photo of a cute little chickadee at my feeder. Figured I’d throw it up here too since my dad really likes chickadees. : )

A couple mornings ago I awoke to the dog excitedly looking out the patio door and half barking. I assumed there was another squirrel peering in…but I went and looked anyway. Unfortunately it was an injured looking white-breasted nuthatch instead. He (or she) was sitting on the step looking traumatized and had possibly had a broken wing, but I was hoping not.

I’m sure the poor nuthatch ran into our big glass patio windows. This hasn’t happened in quite some time. It used to be that we had about one casualty a week, which was upsetting for me as I don’t want to be the cause of any death no matter how small (save for mosquitoes and ticks, I will gladly cause their deaths)…

Many months ago (I can’t remember exactly) I picked up some window decals specifically designed to prevent bird collisions. The are translucent and unobtrusive to me but they apparently look bright purple to the birds. I put some on the windows and have had almost no collisions and zero deaths since then. About once a month a bird will still fly into the window, but it seems with less impact. I suspect that they just notice them too late and put on the “bird-brakes” as Robert calls them so they don’t hit as hard. Most of them just fly away. This nuthatch was the first in a long time to hit hard enough to be stunned. This occurrence was particularly unusual as I’ve never seen a nuthatch hit, nor do I even see them near the patio…they stick to the sides of trees.

I’m definitely nosey, and I also couldn’t get Phoenix to stop barking at the little critter, so I went out to find out if he was really injured or not. By the time I got out he had moved his hurt looking wing and proven it to be okay. Since the dog was not calming down, I decided to try and get the nuthatch on a stick to either move him or rouse him into flying away. He was still a bit stunned, but obviously fine. He sat on the little stick for a minute recovering. Robert snapped a couple pictures…then he flew off into the tree. And I’m pretty sure I saw him eating from the feeder a short while later.

I am glad we are still casualty free. If this happens again I might deem it time to invest in some new decals. They work great, but the packaging did say they only work for about six months than the coloring wears off. It’s well worth the investment for me as I no longer have to feel sad due to bird deaths.

I would imagine you could get them at most bird stores. I live in Durham, NC so I get mine from the Outdoor Bird Company (the best bird store I’ve ever been in).

For an online source, you can get them here too: WindowAlert.com
I’ve lost the packaging, but those look exactly like mine, so they are probably the same brand.

I enjoy having hummingbirds in my yard immensely. Although there are plenty of natural flowers in my beautiful yard, I still like to entice hummingbirds to be closer and more consistently to my work desk as much of the day as I can.

Over the last year I have learned a few things about choosing and maintaining hummingbird feeders that I thought I would share for anyone who is interested.

1. You don’t need to buy hummingbird nectar. You can make your own by melting 1 part plain sugar into 3 parts water, letting it cool and then adding it to your feeder or feeders. The letting it cool part is important. If you have a glass feeder and pour scalding sugar water into an enclosed space, it will crack. Never use artificial sweeteners.
2. Don’t use any artificial colorants. Hummingbirds have tiny bodies. Although we humans seem to not mind all the weird stuff we put into our bodies (at least not in the short term), that doesn’t mean we should put them into hummingbirds bodies. If your feeder has red coloring on it, which most do, then it’s fine if your coloring it clear. If not, it’s probably okay to add a couple teaspoons of organic juice or coloring.
3. The feeder liquid should not be left in the hot sun until it is gone. Bacteria that is harmful to hummingbirds can grow in it and harm or kill the little guys. What I’ve been told is not to leave the food in full sun for more than 3 days, or in shade for more than 6. Because of this I think you will have the most success putting your feeder in a place you can easily reach.
4. If you have a feeder you fill upside down you need to fill it to the brim every time, if not everything will leak out quickly, which just attracts more ants and wasps.
5. Clean the feeder with hot water and rinse with a solution of 1 part white vinegar and 4 parts water. Rinse with clear water thoroughly.

My current set up:
Right now I have just one feeder. It is stuck to the window right by my desk, and the hummies visit it all day. I bought it because of the advice given to me by the guy who works at my favorite bird store. It is a Little Flyer-3 Hummingbird Feeder by Droll Yankees and I’ve been pretty happy with it. These are the benefits:

1. It has a built in ant moat. This works okay, however if the feeder is easily accessible to sugar ants, they will find a way in. But they are less likely to find it partially because it won’t drip once it’s hung. Try to rinse it before you take it out and keep it from slopping around so they don’t get any ideas.
2. It has a built in nectar guard to discourage. Basically they are little flexible internal tips that the hummys beak can get into but a wasp can’t.
3. It comes with a little brush to clean out the container and tips.
4. It has four little perches that will get the hummies to stop for a moment and stay a little longer.

Overall my advice would be buy one feeder at a time. Make sure they are in places you will remember to clean and maintain the food and in places that you are often so you will be able to enjoy them as much as possible. At first they may fly off when they see you, but leave the feeder alone. Hummies are tenacious little critters and they will get used to you and stick around.

When my dad came to visit last October he bought and put up a bluebird house on an old light pole in my backyard. This turned out to be a great choice as the bluebirds love it and I hear that black snakes and coons have a harder time getting up a wide pole if they are in search of eggs or babies. I have no problem with nature being nature, but I would also appreciate my bluebirds having some babies that make it to have little families of their own.

A pair of bluies chose our house pretty early on and started building their nest. The female of the pair became very obsessed with her reflection in our back patio door. For days she would sit right on the other side of the door flapping at herself and making chorteling noises…and then it seemed to stop…until we noticed bluebird poo all over Robert’s car. While leaving it parked in the driveway one day she noticed her reflection in the windshield and continued the threats towards her reflection. So we figured we could stop this by making sure the cars were parked in the carport every night. It seemed okay until she decided that her reflection was so fascinating that she needed to come into the carport, perch on the side mirrors and peer at herself while pooping a lot on the sides of the cars. Not much else we can do now except wash the cars more frequently and hope she loses this weird obsession. It’s kinda cute and funny, except I don’t want her to hurt herself and I would rather not have to wash my car every week.

Moving on. I was excited to see a little bluebird in the nest a short while later. There were three eggs, but only one hatched. I have no idea if that is normal or not. Maybe because they nested earlier it was cool and they hard a harder time incubating? Or maybe mom was busy freaking out at her reflection so much she didn’t take good care of the nest? I have no idea. We’ll see how this next nesting goes. I’ve been happy to see the fledgling around the yard and dad feeding it. We pulled out the old nest and they are already busy making a new one.

Robert learned after clearing out the old nest that next time he should bury it so the parents don’t just use the same material the second time around. We hear old nests can attrach ants which could cause the parents to abondon the nest. We definitely would like to avoid that.

If you were my neighbor this morning, you might wonder why the crazy person next door was running out of her house and yelling a lot. Well there is a good explanation for all the ruckus. There was a mean cardinal chasing a nice cardinal in my backyard and because of it the nice one flew into my window. Upon being stunned to the point of near paralysis, the mean cardinal came in for the kill. I couldn’t let this happen, so I scared off the mean cardinal and then sat by my back door while the stunned nice one sat at the bottom of the stairs to protect the nice one until he felt good enough to fly away. This took around an hour, in the meantime the mean cardinal kept making bold attempts to kill the poor injured guy so I kept opening the door and yelling at it to go away.

Eventually, the nice one started feeling better and hopped from his position at the base of the stairs to the top of the stairs…maybe to say thank you for protecting him? He sure did look thankful.

Unfortunately and surprisingly while I was watching the first little guy finish recovering I heard another thud at my other window! I ran to the other window and there was another cardinal laying on her back on the ground! This time a female. I didn’t take a photo of her on her back because it was too depressing. I felt lucky that the male was recovering and wasn’t sure that this little girl would be so lucky too. I went back to check on the first one at the top of the stairs, and within a few more minutes he flew away. Immediately after the mean one started attacking him again, so I ran out of my house in my robe and slippers chasing them to get the mean one to leave the nice one alone. By this time this nice one was feeling good enough to be scared by me too, so they both flew off, the mean one still in a fighting mood. I heard a bit more ruckus and then they were gone.

At that point there was nothing else I could do for the nice one since he was no longer on my stair so I decided to try and flip the female cardinal onto her belly instead of her back thinking she might get oriented faster that way. I had already ran through the snow and soaked my slipper, so I figured what could it hurt? I grabbed a stick to flip her and surprisingly she grabbed onto it…to which my first thought was “OMG I have a bird on a stick!”.

I brought her back to the stairs so I could keep on eye on her while she recovered. Clearly nothing was broken. While I was moving her I got Robert to snap a couple pictures, then I left her and came in to warm up. About 30mns later Robert opened the door to yell at a blue jay and she flew away and looked just fine. Luckily nobody was trying to attack her.

Since then I have seen a male cardinal at the bird feeder. I’m pretty sure it’s the mean one. My guess is that he chased the nice one out of the yard and having defended his territory left the nice one alone. I hope the nice one finds a good home in someone elses yard. The female however, is still around, she’s already been back and had some seed. I’m really glad they both made it…otherwise, there may have been tears.

I felt a little guilty for enjoying the close up I got of these birds, the male in particular has gorgeous coloring and if you get up really close there is almost a bluish tint to the tips of the featers on his back. Inspiration is always exciting no matter where it comes from, especially when you get to help save cute little critters in the process. : )

If you’re interested, there are more cardinal pictures here, and also some pictures from “Snobama Day” (i.e. on inaguration day it snowed here in the Eno Valley of NC and I got some nice shots on a hike I took that afternoon.)