Kelly - Paintings 48 - 51

...continuing with impressionistic birds. (I guess I should mention I'm limiting my challenge to bird paintings, but I bet you already figured that out! :-)

Painting #48 - Goldfinch on Sunflower

Painting #49 - Goldfinch on Sunflower 2

Painting #50 - Goldfinch on Sunflower 3

Painting #51 - Goldfinch Almost on Sunflower

Kelly - Paintings 42 - 47

This group consists of stylized birds. My brother, Bill, and my son, Matty, are both cartoonists, and they can create the coolest iconic images, Rick can too, but realism always seems to flow out of my paintbrush and capturing a stylized image is hard for me, but this time, I tried to boil things down to symbols and let loose. It was fun! ...but at the end, they are not really stylized!

Painting #42 - Green Air Currents, Energy or Love Flowing Around Little Red Bird

Painting #43 - Red Air Currents, Energy or Love Flowing Around Little Green Bird

Painting #44 - Bird lit by the Light of the Silvery Moon in October

Painting #45 - The berries are right behind you, Little Bird!

Painting #46 - Savannah Sparrow in a Blaze of Autumn Color

Painting #47 - Three Halloween Pumpkins and Three Little Black Birds in Pointy Witch Hats - for my nieces

Kelly - Paintings 38 - 41

I had to drop out of the challenge during the summer, but I was able to start painting again in late September, and now it's time to start posting again too. I have a lot of catching up to do, so I'm going to combine a lot of my paintings into small groups. This first group was inspired by my son, and they are all impressionistic. My son challenged me to paint in a different style and create something new and interesting, so these were experiments. It also was the first time I had ever used acrylics. I started with Golden's "Golden Open Acrylics," which I really liked. They are creamy and smooth and almost oil-like with a slower drying time.

Painting #38 - Winter Robin

Painting #39 - Northern Cardinal in Evening Snow

Painting #40 - Goldfinch in the Grass

Painting #41 - Autumn Chickadee

Kelly - Painting #12 - American Goldfinches on a Thistle Feeder

American Goldfinches eating thistle seeds

on the feeder outside our kitchen window.

Even in their dull winter plumage enough yellow remains in our goldfinches' feathers to brighten the greyest of Cincinnati days. This small flock of goldfinches didn't mind the snowflakes as they meticulously pulled one tiny seed after another from the mesh screening of the thistle feeder.

Painting #11 - Kelly - Mute Swans at the Queen's Hamlet

Mute Swans at the Queen's Hamlet

...an edited down version of "Moulin," the watermill cottage in the simulated rustic village built for Marie Antoinette at Versailles. These "swans" are actually the same swan in different poses. I photographed him last spring swimming in a pond near my house. Since Mute Swans are native to Europe, not North America, he fits perfectly in the French landscape. (I painted this one very quickly, really trying to capture the feel of being on site on a cold and dreary January day.)

Kelly - Painting #10 - English Sparrows in a Paris Alley

Three English Sparrows in a Paris Alley

This painting is doing double-duty because it's part of my "Imaginary Trip to Paris" class I'm taking with Laure. I added the little House Sparrows to this scene because they are common city dwellers and could easily be found in an alleyway. In my mind, I saw these little birds eating bread crusts thrown out for them by a soft-hearted baker--their little chips and bird chatter blending with soft music drifting out of the open back window of the bakery.

Kelly - Painting #9 - Art Hearts for Haiti

A Carolina Wren Art Heart

Thank you, Laure, for putting together this

program to help the people of Haiti through art:

Kelly - Painting #8

American Tree Sparrows Outside my Kitchen Window

To get the mottled background, I applied a very wet mix of Undersea Green and UMBlue then sprinkled on salt. After a couple of hours I scrapped off the salt, leaving the strange pattern behind. Laure has a video showing this technique for making snow, but I used it to achieve texture.

Kelly - Paintings 6 & 7

Painting #6 - Female Northern Cardinal in Tree, 15 Degrees F

Painting #7 - Same Female Northern Cardinal, Same Tree...

...again, working loose and fast. It's a great way to study postures.

Painting 5 - Kelly

...a little female cardinal in a very quick study--working on speed and looseness with this one.