What can I say, it has been a bird feeder weekend. Something I learned from my father is that it is very easy to put together your own bird feeder. Using what I remembered from him, I grabbed a branch of Birch tree and hollowed out a few holes, filled them with a peanut butter and bird seed mixture, popped in some nails as posts for the birds to perch on when they are eating and hung it from the tree.

Now we have five different types of bird feeders and I hope it will attract a wide variety of birds.

There isn’t much of an inspiring story behind either of these pieces. The orchids painting was a lesson from a Japanese watercolor painting book that Eliza picked up for me. The birch tree I wanted to do because, for whatever reasons, birch trees are some of my favorite trees.

I plan on doing this same orchid painting at least a few more times.  The techniques in the book are beyond both my abilities and, I think, the abilities of my brushes. My watercolor brush set isn’t of the highest quality. In order to have the reeds, or leafs, in this painting be much better than they are in this first try – I will need to get the technique down.

I’m fairly pleased with how this piece came out. It took me about 3 and 1/2 hours to complete the painting, since I had to allow the paint do dry between “coats”. My impatience near the end is probably what caused the tree, specifically the trunk, not to turn out exactly like I wanted to. Less a problem of technique and more a problem of patience on this one.

I’m looking forward to doing many more this winter. My goal is to get good enough at watercolor to make a piece that I want to hang in our apartment.