A Chickadee Greeting

The bold little chickadee made it onto another Christmas painting of mine.  Chickadees and cardinals are 2 birds that I really associate with winter here in Wisconsin.  This recent one of mine was done on watercolor paper with a coffee wash over the top.  For some reason I decided to do the stripes on the side by hand without drawing them straight with a ruler first.  I'm not sure if I like the look of it, it's not as clean looking.  The little bird and tree branch were done with recycled tea bags and a little bit of coffee filters ripped and glued onto the paper.  Watercolor, acrylic and some homemade walnut ink were used in the stripes. 



Here's my chickadee I did last year,



and here's the one from the year before.  (at least I think it's a chickadee, his beak is rather large!)  It's interesting to see the difference in the birds from year to year and the style I chose to use.  I didn't look at these other chickadees until I started writing this post.  They are all collages, but they definitely look different from each other.  I'm not sure which one is my favorite, there are parts I like about all of them.     Hmmm, the last 2 have a lot more orange on them,  maybe they are male? 



Yesterday I saw a little nuthatch on our tree.    I think it is time to paint a nuthatch!