Common Nature

This wasn't the shot I wanted to get, but the birds all flew away when I stopped my car to photograph them. I caught only this one, lifting off from the top of a big metal sign. The energy and motion made it a keeper despite its flaws, so I goofed around with the color and contrast to bring out what I liked.



Sometimes I think about how it would be if common crows weren't common, but rare, and rarely seen. No doubt they'd be highly valued for their intelligence and their dramatic, iridescent black cloaks. Familiarity really does breed contempt. :-) 

Blue & Gold #4, 5 x 7", the final one in this set.

I really enjoyed finding the mimosa flowers to use for this fellow, as I needed the golden yellow color but didn't want autumn and had enough of the forsythia for now.

We're about to have anywhere from 6 to 12 inches of snow dumped on our heads over here in the Twin Cities, so I'll take all the golden sunshiny colors I can get. :-D

Poof (Blue Milkweed), 11 x 6", watercolor and pastel on paper

I have these pods in my little home studio, where they are currently shedding pearly fluffy seeds all over my palette and I don't even care. I pick them as closed green pods in September/early October, and keep them and they split open gleefully in the dead of winter.

Oh, and a community question. If a tag doesn't exist for something I post, am I supposed to just add the tag myself? In this case, "seeds," "plants," "weeds" or "botanical" would fit but I don't see any of those.