Tangled Tweeters

Bird with Feathers, Pen and Ink, Watercolor. 2014

No, these birds aren't plugged into a rockin' sound system, although I can imagine the chirps coming from them might be quite unusual. And I don't do that Twitter thing, so I'm not a Tweeter...

I did, however, have a blast making these birds! Although I find it difficult to draw on cold-press watercolor paper, these birds ended up showing their details nicely.

Bird I, Pen and Ink, Acrylic. 2014

After tangling the birds, I colored the first with watercolors. The colors were okay, but now that I've discovered the high-flow acrylic inks (previously), I don't know that I'll ever go back. The colors are so much more vibrant and easy to control, and again, they're waterproof, which is important for attaching the birds to the black masonite forms with gel medium. I added tangled feathers to the watercolor bird in order to dress it up some, which does add to its personality.

I even stretched my shop skills with this project, which is a move I've been meaning to make, but have been too chicken to follow through on. Waaaaay back in junior high, I had a small but meaningful run-in with a large belt sander, the experience of which I'm just now trying to get over– luckily, no injuries were incurred beyond my 7th-grade pride. Which, evidently, was traumatic enough that I avoided the wood shop in college, a decidedly challenging move as a painter needing to build frames for canvas paintings, needed in order to complete my degree. (Which I did, by the way; I just chose to go with pre-fab frames. Much to the chagrin of one of my professors.) Last weekend, with the help of the Shop Smith (and more importantly, my husband- he's indispensable), I cut out the bird silhouettes with the band saw and sanded them with the drum sander. Whoo-hoo! I'll have to do more projects like this because machinery is fu-un!

I've hung the birds above the sliding glass doors going out to the patio from my studio so that I can be reminded of their cheerfulness on the way outside. Birds like this certainly don't live around here, but they brighten up the studio!

As a note, spray lacquer is also fu-un! I'm thinking of more ways to include shiny, lacquered things around the house...