Robin watching.

Our garden isn't huge but I'd be lost without it. There's nothing like watching the birds here to give me a wee lift. Nature is like a free tranquilizer.

I love the dawn chorus, too. I'm usually still awake then, and it helps soothe me to sleep, helps shut my brain down and stop it racing. Last night, I heard the first bird at 2.44am. That's early, even for a blackbird!

Let me introduce you to Newton, my regular visitor and friend. I call him Newton after a teacher I had in Primary School, Mrs Newton, who usually had her head leaning over on one side. He's quite tame (which is more than can be said for Mrs Newton). I've almost got him feeding from my hand. Almost. He comes up to about a foot or so away from me, then I give in and put the food on the ground for him. I can't bear to tease him.

At this point in my spying, a second robin came to have a bath. Friend or foe? I wondered....


Then Newton came down to eat... hadn't he seen the other one on his territory?
Uh-oh.....
He took the food to her!Newton has a girlfriend!!!!
Hurray!

First watercolour.... first bird

A robin, my favourite bird.
I copied this from a photo using a soft pencil, then used watercolour.

This is my first watercolour.
I used to do paintings in acrylic or oils.... a lifetime ago! I loved acrylics, the way you could move them around and use a knife to paint with.
Oils, I loved the depth of colour and the shine, but not the smell or the linseed oil or the long drying time.

Watercolour, I thought, would need the most discipline: you have to decide ahead of time where your lights and darks will go. You sort of paint backwards. You start with your highlights and add dark. With other paints, if you decide that something is too dark, you can scrape it off, or add more of a light colour to it, build, build, build till you get what you want.
With watercolour, once you've lost the light area, that's it. You're left with three options: try to lift it with sticky tape- this will affect the paper, though; literally cut it out- with a craft knife, then cut out a replacement piece and tape it in place at the back; or third option, start again. LOL.

I can see what I could have done here that would have worked better, but I'm still pleased with it as a first.

First bird, too, and I like it because he actually has an expression! That was fluke.