Mental health is an uphill battle. Insurance companies have us in a chokehold. I can't find my scanner's power cable. Have some sketches of gray-crowned rosy-finches. Bucket list birbs for this New Englander. #graycrownedrosyfinch
Refreshed my Prismacolor marker color chart. See the faded strip of color on the right of each swatch? That's the amount of fading after two years without a second in the sun. Fugitive inks! Also, I forgot about the fumes on these markers. 😵💫😵 They are so beautiful and precise to blend, though.
Getting ready to move across town and scanner is already packed and I can't focus on anything augh. Bananaquit is #BucketListBirbs number 1. I ❤️ THEIR FROWNIE LIL FACES.
Lost my reference images, misjudged raptor proportions, and somehow failed to find great swoop-up-to-perch video example. Oh well. Bonus points for biologists who can identify these two types of mimicry.
Tbh didn't realize cuckoos were real birds until I was in my 30s. Here, take this study of striped cuckoo locomotion.
Smol selection of turacos, southern Africa. Party birbs!!! The only bird family currently known w green and red copper-based (oxidizing!) porphyrin pigments in the feathers vs. green and red as structural plumage colors.
Because poisonous songbirds are bada$$. Please enjoy this study of the blue-capped ifrita of New Guinea. Also I gotta work on color blocking and figuring out my order of operations before I start painting.
Study of female sungrebes in colorful breeding plumage. I'm taking suggestions for how to best display a 9x12 inch landscape page on Instagram.
Had a tough time w one of my faves, scaled fruit-eater female. Got confused w order of layers and color blocks. And yes, I can see how a thumbnail sketch would be helpful. Better next time.
A chonky chimney swift, suggested by @fuzzyhorns . FYI, it's quite difficult to find a sharp, well-lit photo of a chim swift mid-flitterflutter. Ref photo by Andy Reago and Chrissy McClarren (Flickr), with a CC by 2.0 (free w attribution) license. They've got some amazing bird and bug pics in their stream.
Worm-eating warblers are mustard, caramel, and olive-colored bbs w black head stripes. Earth-toned treasures of shrubby wooded hillsides! They hunt insects and caterpillars ("worms") by probing clumps of dead leaves w their rather stout decurved bills. Highly camouflaged leaf litter nests on forest floor mean you should stay on human trails as instructed, folks. A coveted high-score warbler at any time of year.
Turns out birb FOMO is such a great motivator for me. I've never seen a CT warb in spring, but occasionally I'll see one skulking around in fall. Belatedly realizing this birb and its pose are so similar to my Canada warbler painting, 😅.