Lovebirds Collection

I have really been enjoying working on this series of decorative illustrations and textile designs, it has been a nice break from my usual dark, moody work! This group began as a simple bird illustration, I was going to use various song birds but as I worked it out I had the inspiration to put love birds on a swing together. I think it is so touching that love birds mate for life, they seemed like the perfect subject matter at this time of year with Valentine's Day approaching. Once I painted them I fell in love with the colors and decided to make the whole thing about love birds. I used a pink ground which is unusual for me but it seemed perfect for the aqua, mint, butter and melon in the birds. The two pieces above are available as prints and notecards in my The Curious Kitchen shop on Etsy.

New Halloween Portrait - The Raven

This year for my Halloween portrait I chose the subject of one of my favorite poems, Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven. I find such delight each year at this time in reciting Poe's poems out loud. His words just tumble and roll off the tongue. I imagined Poe's raven would be well groomed and dapper as was the style of the day and portrayed him as such.

Gentlemen Doves

For some reason I didn't post these in progress. Probably because they are a little different in style and I wanted to see where they were heading. I sketched these out over a year ago and even converted them into needlepoint charts which I'll probably be working on for the next year. The sketches have been hanging on my wall of ideas waiting for me to decide how I wanted to approach them and finally a few weeks ago I just dived in and began. I am very happy with them; they are a little whimsical but I think they convey the warmth and dignity of the humble mourning dove which is after all my favorite bird.