Feather Your Nest

Bird nests fascinate me.  I recently purchased a book called, “Avian Architecture” by Peter Goodfellow.  The book discusses and illustrates how birds around the world design, engineer and build their nests.

I’m hoping this book will help me learn about nests for my paper collages:

I created the one above last night with scraps of paper and a glue stick.

This one I created last year with a gelli-print and  a variety of paper:

I have a bird calendar on my wall of paper paintings by the very talented artist, Elizabeth St. Hilaire Nelson:

Her paper collages are amazing to me!  To see more of her work, go here:

http://www.paperpaintings.com/

Who inspires you to create art?  I would love to know!

Robin Egg Blue

I created a bird nest with gesso and clear bead gel on a wood panel.  I then painted it in layers of watercolor.  This is how it looked when I started:

The eggs are the color of an egg for the American Robin.  Did you know that there is a Crayola crayon that was named Robin Egg Blue in the early 1990’s?

I added several more layers of watercolors:

I then buffed it with a soft damp cloth:

But I found it needed more contrast so I added more paint and defined some of the twigs in the nest with soft vine charcoal:

I’m not sure if it is done so I will set it aside for a few days and then look at it again.

Have you ever found a Robin’s blue egg shell?