Birds of a Feather

Henri Matisse (French, 1869-1954) was a famous painter who had a series of blue paintings. These blue paintings were primarily nudes.

I have been creating a series of art pieces that are bird-centric (unlike Matisse, I am using more than just blue but my birds are "nekked as a Jay-bird", as the saying goes). I have even designed my headstone with a couple of birds...a post about that to come at a later date. 

I do not know why I am drawn (no pun intended) to birds as of late, maybe part of it has to do with my nickname I suppose. 

I have created some of my bird art in the past too. The photos below constitute some of my earlier work.

 

My recent art work has incorporated the quilling technique I learned from a fellow DAR member. For a few years, I've had a small, wooden, cutting board in the shape of Indiana. I had been wanting to do something with it, so I decided to paint it in the likeness of the Indiana state flag and then put a quilled Cardinal (the Indiana state bird) onto it. Here it is.

The Colonel and I were going through some drawers at his mother's house the other day (yes, we are still going through things even after she has been gone for 10 months) and I found a pretty card with a colorful bird on it. I decided to do some quilling on the bird, put him in a shadow box frame and decorate the frame with some quilling too.

A dear friend of mine gave me some beautiful notecards as a gift. I added a little bit of quilling to a couple of the notecards and I hope to put them in a frame some day soon.

I have some sea glass that I am itching to make into a little birds...if they turn out as I hope they will, I will have to share them with you...They turned out as I had hoped and below you can see my sea glass birds. I used colored pencil to draw the tree limb and used some quilled leaves I had made earlier. Now I just have to find the perfect frame for them.

I do not know how long this bird series will run...I just know that John James Audubon has nothing to fear from me.