Birds are Keeping Me Company Today

"The Basis for a Finch Painting"
Sketch in Pencil and Pen & Ink

"Winter Companions"
Digital Watercolor Collage

I think in a past life I was either a flower or a bird, as I always feel a deep connection to each of them. Lately, I've been focusing on birds as flowers seem to have departed now to let Old Man Winter make his presence known. Also, I have been requested to work on several bird images nestled into a snowy, winter scene, so I'm sure this has influenced my decision to focus on birds as well. (Balancing what my soul wants to do with what the public wants from me, a delicate dance, indeed). I started with a pencil drawing accented with pen & ink. (I was in a serious mood at the time and trying to be precise). Then I decided to color the birds via the computer process, but that got too complicated. Then the fun voice within me kicked in, said "Enough already, Take a Break, It's Playtime" and the second painting above emerged. I combined several birds from past creations and then really worked with my imagination on a background. The two different sparrow sizes happened because I like to vary images. And better yet, maybe my growth as an artist can be depicted by the larger bird. Who knows? I sure do like to psychoanalyze myself regarding creativity, but I'm told to write about my passion, my love, so soul-searching ponderings are evident in some shape or form. I think my ideal career would be psychoanalyzing creative pieces, hm, a thought!!!! And they could be a captive audience, not speaking back to me. I like that even better.

I am beginning to like doing backgrounds. It's actually challenging to fill up the whole paper. Perhaps it helps me to make a more complete statement now about what I am creating. And from a psychological point of view, (can't keep my shrink voice quiet), the Whole is the Sum of its Parts, a gestalt kind of thing. I find that I am taking various parts of myself and putting them together, like a puzzle piece, into whatever I put down on paper. Well, I've certainly got off the track in creating my finch images, but I cannot control my creative process and I would not want to.