
Oil on canvas, 6" x 6"
I'll be leaving tomorrow morning to go to Canada for about a week, and won't be posting while I'm gone. I'm bringing a sketchbook- maybe I'll actually have something to post when I get back.

So here I am painting in my backyard and thinking that some paintings should be sold with soundtracks. This one would be pretty new age-y, lots of birds, but with some angst.
Behind me is the birdhouse with one of the parent sparrows who ARE NOT HAPPY that I'm painting there but they seem to have decided to just deal with it. The sounds- the anxious and annoyed chattering of daddy sparrow (in a tree a little farther away); the tiny peeps of the chicks inside the house; and the fluttering of wings behind me as the parents make continual stealth flights in and out to feed them. A few other birds, a lawnmower and a plane going overhead would complete the soundtrack.

I've been wanting to do a larger painting of our shade garden, like, SOFA sized, so I decided to do some sketches first. Yesterday I worked on a few pencil sketches, and this morning I did the color sketch on the bottom. It's painted with gouache, which I used to use all the time as an illustrator, but haven't used for probably a couple of years. I was disappointed but not surprised to find that a number of my tubes of paint had dried up, but there was still enough usable paint to make it work.