Extra edition for “Draw a bird day”

Floating birds, watercolor, gesso, pencil and black pen

OK! Sunday was mother’s day. At our house it was “throw out some old stuff day” though. And we all had some things to do seperately. Mostly indoors as suddenly Summer arrived – with temperatures of 26 degrees Centigrade. Just two weeks ago it felt like winter in our neck of the woods (low temperatures, hail storms causing accidents on the roads, snow in some places in the east of the country). Well that’s Spring for you! Anyway. When the day was almost over, temperatures getting to a nice level, we had a lovely barbecue celebrating the end of the school holiday. That may have been the reason I totally forgot about “Draw a bird day”: a practice of drawing a bird each month on the 8th. (More on that below.)

But totally by accident (ha!) I did start a painting with some birds (see above). I wanted to try making a new series of animal watercolors in the same manner as the paintings I did in January. I used a layered mixed media painting technique involving watercolor, gesso and pencils. The technique doesn’t really work for a brief daily painting session of 30-60 minutes. It works only in one go, if you have more time on your hands, as it usually takes many layers for a painting to be finished. I started several pages – and finished  one (not a bird). But I did start this painting that day; it’s a multi layered thing.

This is how it looked after two days (below).

Draw a bird day is a monthly event on WordPress – hosted by Laura from Create Art Every Day. The idea is  to fly as many birds as possible on WordPress on the eight of every month. By the way, there’s a lot more stories around this initiative. You can read about the original idea of having a ‘Draw a bird day’ (once a year) on Laura’s blog.

LINKS

• Similar  pieces with imaginary creatures can be found on my 30 paintings in 30 days January 2016 page. (follow link and scroll down to day 13 through to day 21).