Painting Birds

It facinates me watching beautiful color mixture of birds, especially the color on the wings. I capture those vibrant colors in many of my impressionist paintings. The multi-color combinations reflect many dimentions when the sun shines on them. Birds from blue jay, cardinal, dove, hoopoe to kingfisher are my favorite subjects in the “Wings” series. I also get much pleasure looking at bird paintings done by naturalist artist such as John James Audubon. His paintings of birds, I think, are both artistic and scientific. They are the best in the world. In his book, Birds of America, the paintings show excellent examples of humanity’s relationship with birds that exist since the early days of cave dwellings. John Audubon’s paintings continue to inspire worldwide bird-watching groups for centuries. This week there is a slide show of beautiful bird paintings from water color of a male ruff dated around 1788 to a golden eagle and scarlet ibis painted by John James Audubon himself in 1837. I enjoy watching them, and recommend to those interested not to miss seeing this particular slide set.