Drawing Tuesday - birds of a feather

 Plenty of angles for attacking this topic, among them -

(1) birds  - in life and in art, plenty to draw on there. Audubon's birds - drawn life size, that's why the flamingo looks so awkward - https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/audubons-birds-of-america-fetches-10-million/

Painted onto tiles (found in the Dec16 issue of World of Interiors, which came to hand this morning as my breakfast reading)

(2) feathers - plumage - shapes, colours, variations, flight, evolution (https://scitechdaily.com/how-flight-feathers-evolved-study-of-chickens-ostriches-penguins-ducks-and-eagles/). And the feather trade, when hat fashions nearly wiped out entire species...https://americanhistory.si.edu/feather/ftfa.htm

Items made of feathers - quill pens, feather dusters, polynesian feather capes....

3) "... flock together" - murmurations (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakKfY5aHmY&ab_channel=raisingmaggie for a video), migration, crowd behaviour... 

From Carol - These metal geese were a present from my Mother-in-law and walk down my garden path.  It used to annoy me that one was off balance and fell over all the time.  Now the ‘clunk’ as it falls on the path is part of the soundscape of my garden and I would not want to be without them. I think my Mother-in-law would have appreciated the joke.

From Sue K - a peacock feather - rendered in pastels on black.

Felt inspired to do another version of this topic using collage - fun was had. Swimming figures were turned into a striped feather. 

From Mags -My drawings in white Posca pens and watercolour pencils  are of Great Bustard feathers  collected on Porton Down in 1986  ( I was working as botanical surveyor  on  MOD Salisbury Plain Training Area  and we visited the reintroduction project ) . By coincidence I'm wearing my guinea fowl  tshirt  acquired ( along with  raku ceramic )  at Kirstenbosch botanic garden in 1998 !

From Judith - London tourists

From Ann - An interpretation of the proverb......I liked the idea of the gang..of like minded people. 

From Joyce -  Gelli plate print of a feather, it was a white feather found in my local woods.

From Gill - Birds of paradise. I felt like being transported somewhere exotic.

From Janet K - A silly feather drawing. Red wig made of dyed ostrich feather and yak hair.

From Janet B - Sunday afternoon silliness. A couple of rubber ducks from the Apex Quay hotel in Dundee. 

From me - a sideways look at colours of plumage. The shapes are all wrong, of course, and the colours are a bit off too (not enough brown, perhaps?), but I'm immersed in working out a subject for this term's woodblock print; this is a reject, but I had to get it out of my system....

The colours are derived from a visit to the aviary in Pittville Park, where this glorious creature can be seen strutting his stuff -

Better than my version is what Freya did with the puddles of watercolour remaining in the palette -

The one at top right is a dead ringer for the golden pheasant, don't you think?