Showing posts with label chipping sparrow. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chipping sparrow. Show all posts

Saturday, May 16, 2020

Chipping Sparrows on the Easel Today


Two Little Chipping Sparrows - Pastels - 6"x10" each

I'm still in the learning phase with using Panpastels, and enjoying every moment of it! It's so much fun working directly with pigments - and the temptation to use my fingers to blend the colors (unsafe due to chemicals in various colors) has diminished greatly with this product. That's because we use soft, shaped sponges to apply and blend colors on the papers. There's also so much less pastel dust (also poisonous to breathe in), so it's both safer and easier to use today than throughout history!

The following shows the progress on each as I worked on them yesterday.

And the finished pieces:

To be honest, I actually prefer the paintings without the background color added. I like the birds against the subtle gray paper.

What's your opinion on that?

Saturday, May 05, 2018

Back to Spring and Art!


Spring has finally arrived for more than a couple of hours and all is well at long last! While out and about, I've caught a few springtime photos to share with you. After this rather long, drawn out winter, spring is especially welcome everywhere!
The Chipping Sparrows and Bluebirds come by daily to my feeders and our lovely, little weeping cherry tree has bloomed in between the cold snaps.

The farmlands are greening up and the young animals are starting to appear. I wish my resident baby bunny didn't eat the tops off all the crocus and other spring bulbs, however, I wish him/her well!

And I'm painting again - my PT for the shoulder replacement has been completed. I still have some strength training to do to regain the abilities of heavier lifting and higher reaching, but all is well.

Today it was time to get to working on a portrait promised to The Memory Project that must be completed and mailed back in a week or two. The Memory Project is, to quote their website: "The Memory Project is a charitable nonprofit organization that invites art teachers and their students to create and donate portraits to youth around the world who have faced substantial challenges, such as violence, disasters, extreme poverty, neglect, and loss of parents."

So I have the photo of a delightful young Polish orphan boy, who I've been praying for ever since the packet arrived. We will never meet or correspond, but somehow I feel connected to this little boy. He will become a wonderful man, despite his sad early life, of that I am sure. Here are a couple of photos of the process. I cannot share his photo - for privacy reasons. But I can share the process!


If you are a teacher or a member of an art group, you might consider offering to paint a portrait of a child so that he or she might better see how he/she can be seen by others - full of hope and promise. Just click on the link about to learn more about The Memory Project.

Thursday, October 16, 2014

The Bird Portraits - continued

Sorry for the tardy follow-up to the bird portrait series. We've had a few major changes in our life, including the departure of our granddaughter and twin-great-grandaughters followed by our move to a new home. I'll write about that another time.

So here are the bird portraits insofar as they have progressed. I have some finishing details to add to a couple of them and more work to do on a few. But it's time to reveal the work and get some feedback.

All the portraits are on 12" x 12" stretched canvases and painted with artist quality acrylic paints.


Let me know what you think! Suggestions welcome.