Birds and teabags

Sunday Sketches

I am killing two birds with one stone so to speak today.  I have been very fortunate to have a lot of time this week to create art.

For Sunday Sketches I decided to show two of a series of NZ native birds I am doing for cards.  I am trying to use the looser style that I have for my ladies.  (My birds and flora are usually very detailed.)

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These two birds are one of my favourites The Tui.  It was scarce for a number of years but now is becoming more common as it is moving into the towns and cities as people are planting more native trees and shrubs in their gardens.  It has a beautiful song and a couple wake me up every morning singing to each other.  They are a largish bird and rather clumsy, but oh how they sing and their iridescent colours just gleam in the sunlight.

The male has a beautiful white ruffle of feathers under its beak and white thin feathers behind its head.  The Tui is a nectar eater and unfortunately gets very greedy in spring when the Kowhai Tree is in flower.  They can denude the tree overnight and leave a carpet of shredded flowers for us humans to sigh over!  Sometimes it seems as they are having a drunken brawl over the flowers and is rather funny to watch.

Art Journal Journey

The theme for art Journal Journey this month is collage.   I decided to get out my plastic box full of abandoned projects and make some art from them.

Some time ago early last year I had a period of painting portraits on teabags.  The page above I pasted onto a small page of weaved strips from pages of a book that I am altering. Then I just simply washed some watercolour over the lot.

The page below I pasted the teabag onto some ripped squares from the same book and then pasted that lot over half of a spoiled watercolour of anemones.   Then did a bit of splashing!  Moral of story don’t throw anything out, it can be combined with other bits and pieces to make an okay page.

Um I still have lots of teabags and scraps and messed up paintings to use up, so no doubt I will be posting more collages before the month is out.

So that’s it for today so thanks Alexandra from Sunday Sketches

and Susi and Valerie for hosting Art Journal Journey.

Visit both as there is some wonderful art to be seen.