Welcome visitor

My mother lived in a rural area on a very large plot of land and few close neighbors. You could frequently hear Eastern Towhees scratching in the line of pine trees at the edge of her property and saying "tweet". (Although the experts say their call is "to-wheee", to me it sounds more like they are succinctly pronouncing the word "tweet" - "tuh-wee-t". I've always thought that was just so cute.) After my mother passed away five years ago, we moved into town and I never saw or heard those sweet little birds anymore. A couple of days ago, being such a beautiful spring day, I had the windows wide open to let the warm breezes in and lo and behold what do I hear? "Tweet!" I immediately got up and started trying to locate where the sound was coming from, but never could. The next day I heard that same call and heard the familiar scratching along the treeline at the back of our property. There he was! At that moment, I knew I had to paint him. Welcome to our home, little Towhee.

A little bird just flew in

Sometimes I worry that the day will come when I finally run out of ideas for designs. Fortunately, yesterday wasn't that day. I had been thinking about doing a design with a bird for a while, but couldn't come up with anything. While I was watching something on t.v. last night I saw a woman wearing a pin that inspired this. In PaintShop I used one of the preset shapes to create the flower. I found a photo of a bird that I liked the shape and position of and used him as my model for painting in Painter 4. After I finished painting him using a watercolor brush, I sent him over to PaintShop where I used the bucket fill tool to add the pattern to his wing. Then, I cut him out and pasted him as a new layer on top of the flower. After a few more adjustments - voila! This button is just one of several things I put him on. The more things I added him to, the more I liked him. I hope other people like him too.

Had an unbelievable sale on Zazzle yesterday. I sold twelve of these shirts! It's from an original mixed media drawing I did a while back. I guess it's time I stopped complaining about not having any sales. :-)