La Mirada

Still working on my painting. Today I painted most of the morning. The painting moved from where it was to a place with new problems but new opportunities. Some of what I did I really like. Some I realize I'd like to move back a bit to where I was. I'm not finished with the changes either. I worked on the bird sculptures and realized the table had to get bigger. So I outlined how it will be (almost) and will come back to it next time I paint. For some reason this painting looks very dark in the regular photo. It's worth looking large for a better take on the values in the painting.

I stopped painting this afternoon because my brother Steve arrived to play a game of Carcassonne before we both went our separate ways again. By then it was time to pick up Helena and head out for some shopping. Tonight we are all going to the park to listen to music and meet up with friends from the Alzheimer's Society support groups, his and mine.

This morning I photographed a relatively rare bird and considered blipping it instead of my painting. Decided to put it in extras instead. It is a hybrid Northern Flicker. It is a male with a red splash of color on the top of its head and red streaks along the side of his face. The red shafted flicker doesn't have red on his head and the yellow guy has black splashes, not red, on his face. So this guy is a hybrid of both types. I could not get a good look at his shafts but I think they are kind of orange instead of bright red. They aren't yellow. That much I could tell.

I put an earlier version of my painting and the flicker photo in the extra photos. I'm almost out of them... guess I'll start deleting them from earlier entries.