Birthday Birds

Not only was Sunday Father's Day, a week ago was my father's birthday so there was quite a bit of dad celebrating to do. For those of you who don't know my father, he is an excellent musician, fantastic furniture maker and quite the technical illustrator. And none of those are even his day job. But his job does intersect with one of his oldest hobbies - birdwatching. So it was a natural choice to make they contents of his birthday card avian.

Here's a lovely sketch.

And the final painting.

It Is Not Only Fine Feathers That Make Fine Birds

So this is actually back from in December, but I finally got around to photographing it. The tunnel book depicts one of Aesop's Fables called "The Jay and the Peacock" which goes like this:

A Jay venturing into a yard where Peacocks used to walk, found
there a number of feathers which had fallen from the Peacocks when
they were moulting.  He tied them all to his tail and strutted
down towards the Peacocks.  When he came near them they soon
discovered the cheat, and striding up to him pecked at him and
plucked away his borrowed plumes.  So the Jay could do no better
than go back to the other Jays, who had watched his behaviour from
a distance; but they were equally annoyed with him, and told him:


 "It is not only fine feathers that make fine birds."

This is the tunnel book in all its three dimensional glory.

This is a scan of all the flattened layers. It just captures the color better.

As usual, its all watercolor (although this time with a bit of gouache in all those feathers).