Finch and Crow

This little guy was inspired by the sweet little purple finches that have been coming to our feeder this spring.  A beautiful bird with a wonderful song to sing.

I played around a bit with this piece.  I started with some nice splattering of coffee for the background and then drew in the bird.  I used a lot more watercolors in this piece than I'm  normally comfortable with.  I still haven't quite figured out watercolors yet, but I keep trying to work with them and find a technique or style that I like using.   The feathers were done with painted recycled coffee filters and tea bags.  The outlines were done with some homemade walnut ink.  Originally I was going to leave the background alone, but it just looked so plain and empty to me, and then I just kept adding and adding with watercolor, painted tissue paper and tea bags.  Hopefully I didn't add too much!

The crows around here have also been entertaining us.  This little guy left the nest on Friday and anytime ANYTHING got near it, it's parents would cause quite a raucous.  Cawing and cawing until whatever it was left.  They even chased several cats over the weekend, at one point there was about 8 crows going after one cat!  When our kids or our dog would go out to the swing set, the crows would sit just above in the trees and yell and yell  at them.  Very impressive parenting!  Today I found him out on our fence.  The parents were near by cawing a bit, but then left.  I'm wondering if they think he is old enough now to take care of himself?  I'm not sure.  This little guy stayed on the fence for about 45 minutes and then finally flew away to the top of our neighbors chicken coop.  I love watching the crows, so big and really quite beautiful,  such a smart bird that doesn't get the respect it deserves!