Blue Jay and Chickadees sitting in treetops

One last blog for today, based on some really early work. The blue jay and chickadees sitting in treetops was done using a tempera type of gauche from my art class, I was 11 years old so this must have been around grade 6 or 7. My love of brown, blue, grey, and tree branches started early.

This was done a few years before I did my first original watercolour painting of red flowers from imagination. It also seems to be mostly from my imagination although the birds probably used the illustrated Roger Tory Peterson field guide to birds as source material. We had a copy in our family for bird watching in the backyard and on our annual camping trips.

8 x 10" art paper, tempera 1987