Thirty Days hath September - Day Ten - Collaborations with birds

If you have been following this blog from the beginning of the project, you will have easily deduced that I like my work to have a narrative. I can't just paint something for the sake of painting it, I need to feel a connection with it.

Today's project needed to be a quick one as I'm off on my travels tomorrow (more of that later) and my husband and I needed to complete the aviary which he had built for our rescue birds. Yes, there's a story to go with that too but for the time being, let's just go with it shall we? So I thought I would combine the two things and do some sketching of them while I was working in there. Now, call it my contemporary degree training but I decided it might be fun to get the birds to collaborate with me, I love a collaboration (and there will be more of those later on too), why not with my animals?

I took a piece of Hot Pressed watercolour paper, which I thought would be perfect for what I had in mind and popped it on the floor of the aviary for the birds to investigate.

After curiosity got the better of them, they proceeded to walk all over it and supply me with a perfect background pattern for my sketches!

I decided to use watersoluble pens for the sketching, forgetting that one of the reasons I hate Hot Pressed paper is that it's too smooth for the type of techniques I like to use. Phez was fascinated by the box of pens however...

Ditching the pens and switching to pastel pencils, I proceeded to sketch them pecking around my feet, a discipline I've never done before although I've done a considerable amount of life drawing. Birds are more difficult than people, take it from me.

However, despite all of that, it was a very enjoyable hour or so and spending time with Phez and Buffy is always escapism for me, so here we have a very speedy sketch of my two birdy friends, partly with their help.

Tomorrow I will be travelling up to Newark on Trent for a workshop on Tuesday so you are in for a treat, Jasmine my wonderful creative designer and Girl Friday, will be guesting on the blog for me. Enjoy, I have no idea what her project is but I can't wait to read about it myself.