Rain's Thursday Art Date: Birds and the Sky

 

It's Thursday and that means we're meeting at Rain's for her Thursday Art Date.  This week, the theme is Birds and the Sky.  Unlike last week, I have a ton of art I can share on this subject.

I entitled this one Birds of a feather practice social distancing.

 

This book is for the Birds.

It is all handmade and sewn.  It was a gift for my dear friend Halle.

This shows the inside.

These are the first two pages.

It appears I only got page 3 in this shot.

This was page 4.

I think I got this page out of order.

This is the middle section.  We are half way through the book now.

These are the final two pages, which are pages 7 and 8.

In 2015, I participated in an Altered Playing Card challenge.  I called this one For the Birds.

 

When I found this quote attributed to Franklin Roosevelt, I had to use it.  In case you can't read it:

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm. 

In 2016, I was in a six player swap.  One of the people I sent to was Valerie, whose theme was Birds.

This is page 2.  Most of these images were tape transfers onto dictionary pages.

Page 3 included real feathers and a "page" of field notes that described the birds found that day.

I got a bit carried away on page 4.

This details two of the images found inside the tiny book I created.

These are the other two images and the front cover.

This is page 5, a bit of humor so I could include Bleubeard.

This is page 6 and reads "Shake your tail feather."  I used two types of alpha stickers and a lovely peacock.

To be honest, this was the last page I created, even though it is page 7.  By the time I got here, I was truly out of new ideas.  It appears Bleubeard had a few, though.

I used bits of fabric on this page and also stamped two images.  I sent Valerie one of the stamps after I realized I had two of them.  The eggs were a transfer.

We each created a tag in lieu of a sign-in sheet.  This was the back, where I would add my information.

This was my front.

I created this for a challenge at Art Journal Journey.  I started by running four colors of water soluble crayon over the 110 lb cardstock.  Once dry, I weighted it down under a heavy book for two days, but it never completely lost its warp.  

Finally, I sewed and changed thread, sewed and changed thread, and sewed and changed thread to create this.

 

I called this Days of Birds and Flowers.  I auditioned several ribbons and laces before sewing them, using black, gray, and white variegated thread to the computer generated image and sentiment.  Keeping with the black and white theme, they were sewn to black cardstock.

 

I created three bird related tags, then glued them to a page from my watercolor journal.

In 2013, I started a new altered book that I'm still working in.  This was the first entry.  Since I'm a statistician and mathematician, I wrote this about my first entry in this book:

 

In 2007, Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote a book entitled The Black Swan.  Later that year in a New York Times article, he explained his concept of Black Swans:

What we call here a Black Swan (and capitalise it) is an event with the following three attributes. First, it is an outlier, as it lies outside the realm of regular expectations, because nothing in the past can convincingly point to its possibility.  Second, it carries an extreme impact. Third, in spite of its outlier status, human nature makes us concoct explanations for its occurrence after the fact, making it explainable and predictable.

Now let's switch gears.

 

When my friend Sally and I went to the zoo one year, I got to see a REAL black swan.  

These photos were taken with a very uncooperative subject.

It's obvious, we were in the Australia section of the Zoo.  I never saw the Emu, but I read the sign and took a photo of it.

There were all kinds of birds associated with Australia.

Some I could identify,

some I could not.

Some were colorful, 

some were friendly,

like this beauty I would never have known, had I not seen a plaque.

More color

and more I couldn't identify.  

I have tons more photos from other zoos, but I think it's time to move on.

 

Feel free to stop by my main floor bath

that is covered wall to wall with bird art of all kinds.

You might say I have a bird fetish.

Yes, I'm that short!

And obviously in need of a bigger bath!

Or maybe less birds.

Every nook and cranny is filled.

This is deceiving.  These are large framed birds and take up one wall in the bath.

While going for coffee several years ago, a friend asked if I liked birds.  He said he had a friend who raised them.  How could I turn down seeing something so special.

After introductions, another cup of coffee provided by his friend, we walked into the shop, where the birds were kept. 

Although I shot this with my old worthless camera, I was happy with what few shots I got.  I had to laugh at this one sitting on the feed and not letting the other birds near it.

Of course, they were all so busy skipping, hopping, and flying (see the feathers in the lower left) they didn't have time to notice their food had been hijacked.  I was surprised how well these photos turned out, especially since

I shot the photos through those tiny bars.

There was no overhead lighting in the room, just lights for the birds.

Next came the parakeets which were in a different room.  They were equally active.  The cockatiels were in the next cage further back. One blogger from Australia said what we called parakeets were actually Australian Native Budgerigars.

I even got a glimpse of the newborn parakeets and the ones that were not yet born that were kept in a box on one side of the parakeet cage.

I could show lots more, but you are probably bored and poor Laurie will probably be frustrated because I had so many photos.

 All art was created by me and all photos taken by me.  Bleubeard wants to chase all the birds and was very pleased to have been included in the artwork this week, too.  He feels vindicated for being snubbed last week by Squiggles and me

 

Thank you ever so much for stopping by.  I am truly grateful to you, my friends, followers, readers, and lurkers for visiting.  Please also join me at Rain's Thursday Art Date.