The Wonderful Words for This Wednesday are, ‘Birds and Butterflies and Blooms, OH MY!’

Have you noticed that the sun is out (most days) and it’s light until after 9pm?,  Have you heard the birds welcoming the morning each day before 5am?  Have you seen blooms showing off their beauty everywhere you look?  Well, Spring has officially sprung!

I’m going to confess that I used to not like Spring or Fall.  I considered them transition seasons where you were not fully in winter or summer, but BOTH.  I’d lament that I couldn’t put my winter coats and socks away because I still needed them in the mornings and evenings.  If I had dressed for the cold morning and found myself still out and about in the afternoon, I’d be miserably hot and sweaty.  On the flipside, if I dressed for the heat of midday and found myself still out past 7pm I’d be FREEZING.  I know what you’re thinking – layers!  Well, I’ve never been very good at layers…..

Now that I think about it, I believe this frustration grew out of living aboard our sailboat.  We tried to only have one season of clothes on board at any given time, because if I dare to state the obvious, there is not a lot of room for shoes, coats, and clothes on a boat!

Since we’ve lived in a house, where my entire wardrobe is always at the ready, I’ve learned to embrace Spring and Fall.  Furthermore, I’ve discovered that each season breathes new life into my creative practice.

Life has been crazy hectic lately, but I’ve still been creating art of all kinds when I have a few minutes here and there as it is my way of getting out of my head and focus on beauty.  Collecting inspiration with photos from my daily errands, walks, etc., keep the creativity flowing.

So, as I looked at the last several things I created, I noticed they were about birds, butterflies, or blooms!

Birds

I am a complete bird nerd and all those who know me are aware of this.  I frequently get random pics of birds from friends asking, ‘What’s this bird?” and I can usually identify it quickly and easily.  At one point, I thought I was going to be a bird photographer but NOPE!  That is a skill I did not have the patience to develop.  I have gotten some pretty good pics of birds, but nothing to write home to the parents about.  Those little buggers move a LOT!

Instead, I keep a feeder full of high quality birdseed and homemade suet (click HERE for the recipe) and hummingbird food (click HERE for the recipe), and just enjoy watching all those beauties from my kitchen window.   In Spring they bring their babies and feed them right at my feeder!

Now there’s birds around all year long, but they don’t sing like they do at dawn and dusk in Spring.  I lie there in the early hours of bird song and try to identify what birds are singing.  When I hear a new song, I challenge myself to figure out who’s singing it.

So, inevitably, birds make their way into my art like so:

This shows a bird painted onto a page of an old Japanese book.

Butterflies

I am recently discovering I love butterflies in my art.  Their symmetry is soothing to my soul and their beauty is unmatched.  Right now I’m particularly interested in the Blue Blue Morpho Butterfly that lives in Central and South America.  They are STUNNING!  So I drew and painted my own rendition of one, adding gold for fun.  I made this little stunner into a card:

This shows a butterfly painted onto an old song sheet and then made into a card

ALSO, I have had the joy of being on the beach a lot lately and have been collecting little clam shells that are perfectly in tact and open to paint as butterflies!  I’m just starting to experiment with what I want to do with these little sweeties, so stay tuned!

This shows the clam shells that I collected to paint like butterflies

This is an image of a clam shell painted like a butterfly

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Blooms

Last, but certainly not least, we have blooms.  I’ve been taking an on-line class called ‘Flower Flow’ by one of my favorite mixed media artists, Laly Mille, and one of the activities she has us do is draw simple line drawings of flowers with our non-dominant hand.  I had a blast with this activity!  When I got done, I did a little collage in my art journal which delighted me.  A butterfly even showed up!

This is a page in my art journal with line drawings of flowers and collage

Yes it’s messy and wonky, but I love it and I had a wonderful time making it!

I used a few of my wonky flowers for cards as well – I love them!

Conclusion

Every bit of the above projects started out as pure play.  I had no end in mind, I just wanted to get creative and enjoy myself.  I’ve got endless more bird, butterfly, and bloom inspiration at the ready to feed my creativity.  Happy Spring ya’ll!!

Have you spent time just playing art recently?  What inspires your creativity?

Kimberly Snider, Virtuoso, Signing Off

Playartwithkim.com