Saturday, January 09, 2010

Watercolor Study #?

I need to sit down and count up all my paintings from the Challenge again. When I stopped posting every single thing I painted, I lost count of what I'm actually up to. I vaguely knew when I'd reached 50, the halfway point, but since then I keep painting without counting. So here's #? of a ruddy turnstone, a beautiful shorebird that is much easier to identify than the groups of sandpipers that are so hard to tell apart that birders collectively call them "peeps". Ruddy turnstones are found along the East, West and Gulf coasts in winter. However, I took this picture in Florida one June. Apparently the flock of turnstones that my subject was a part of had decided not to bother with the long migration to the Arctic for the summer and opted to stay in Florida year-round. Given everything that birds have to cope with during their migrations, I can't say I blame them.

2 comments:

Kelly said...

...he is beautiful, and I really get the feel he is foraging in the shallow skim water. That back foot looks like it's tuck under a bit of sand, and the reflection is spot on!

Krista Meister said...

I agree with Kelly, love the back foot stuck in the sand, and the reflections in the water. He's also got that "hunched over, don't bother me, I'm looking for food" look.