A Day in the Life of a Tulip

Aah spring.  The weather has been warm, the sun is shining, the snow has all melted.  The huge piles of ice and gravel by the side of the roads and in the parking lots have diminished measurably.  It's enough to make you believe in spring again.
I took a bouquet of spring flowers to my family dinner at Easter.  The buds were tightly closed, but we put it in water and a vase. There in a room filled with warmth and love and laughter, the buds opened up and filled the room with color and fragrance.  I think that's an apt metaphor for families.  My workplace is facing massive budget cuts and layoffs and it's all been very tense  and worrisome.  But at Easter, in that room filled with warmth and love and laughter, I could feel my soul, so tightly closed against loss and worry, opening up again.  I could feel myself becoming myself again.  Yes, that's what's important, and that's what will see me through the tough times.
I used a lot of water on this page and it wrinkled and crinkled - hence the wonky photo.
Watercolor and Inktense pencils in HandBook sketchbook.

The Tiding Revisited

I've posted before about the magpie triplets that were born in my backyard last summer.  They're still here, and still as brash and bossy as ever. They are endlessly entertaining and fascinating to me.  I have tried to draw them several times, and have not had much success.  I can't get the shape of their beak right especially when open. My original idea (you know, the perfect sketch in my head) was to have all 3 of them on the branch all with their mouths wide open, trying to out-shreik each other. That's how I usually saw them.  But try as I might, I cannot manage to get all three of them on the page. But this time, I think the beaks are shaped better. As I create this post, they are in the back yard on the tree branch exactly like this. But they are never still enough to actually draw them. Even in the dreary midwinter, they are still a joy to watch.
The theme over at Creative Every Day is Black and White.
Watercolot on Canson paper

Resplendent Quetzl

This crazy looking creature is the Quetzl bird - the official bird of Guatemala.
I come from a winter country where there is not a lot of foliage cover in the winter.  The birds here tend to be a bit more drab and neutral to provide natural camouflage.  I have to wonder, though, what purpose or advantage this bright plumage provides the Quetzl bird. They are quite large and don't seem to have a lot of predators so maybe they don't need camouflage or the need to be hidden.  Sightings are rare, and we were not fortunate enough to see one on our trip there.  Perhaps the rain forest foliage is dense enough that they can't be seen even with the bright colors.
They war sacred birds to the Maya, symbolizing the progress of Creation and the will of the Creator come to Earth The marriage of the quetzal with the snake resulted in Quetzlcoatl or The Plumed Serpent which represents the movement of creation and all things produced by that movement.  Including you and me. We are all part of creation and a part of each other.  Maybe if more people today believed that the world would be kinder place.
Inktense pencils in HandBook sketchbook

Longwing Zebra Butterfly

This beautiful butterfly is found in Mexico and Central America, as well as the Caribbean.  It's common in many of the countries we visited on our Panama Canal cruise.
The cruise had a lot of days at sea, and the cruise line did a fabulous job of offering a wide variety of activities for passengers.  I was delighted to discover they were offering watercolor painting classes. I was too late for the first class. They ran out of supplies by the time I got there, so I didn't actually do this butterfly on the ship.  The second day, I got there earlier and got supplies and the drawing from the day before.  The supplies included brushes, papers, and a set of 6 water color paints in tubes.  They were student grade paints and were disappointingly chalky.  But I enjoyed the classes, especially as the instructor had chosen to do things that we would actually see on the cruise. As an introvert, I try to attend group classes where I have to share and meet and talk with others.  I met lots of interesting people, many of whom were trying watercolor for the first time. It was fun seeing their impressions of trying something new.  Some people hated it and didn't come back after  the first class, but others said they would continue on after getting home.  I hope they do.  I wanted to redo some of these drawings with better quality paints.  For this one, I used my Inktense pencils because I wanted to get a really strong black. I hope to do some of the others in the near future.
By the way, there are two kinds of zebra butterflies - the longwing, and the swallowtail.