Work in Progress - Bowerbird Mini

I’ll have this finished tonight most likely, but here are some photos of a piece I worked on for a couple of hours last night.

For those of you who don’t know anything about Bowerbirds, they are really fascinating. They are like the interior decorators of birds. The males arrange elaborate bowers to attract mates (i.e. the ones with the best “pads” get the girl). To that end, they actually arrange foliage, berries etc to decorate their bower (which are elaborate “buildings” made out of thatched twigs etc.) Some of them even PAINT with twigs dipped into natural dyes to further decorate the bower.

Here is a cool video on the subject

There are different types of bowerbirds. The one below is a satin bowerbird (not the same one as the one in the above video).

“Bowerbird” (in process)
6×9”
black and gold ink, tea on 140 lb. cold-press watercolor paper