Hand Drawn Bird

I wanted to write my first new "art received" blog about this sweet hand drawn flamingo card that I received from Aiah today. The card was traded for a Hand-drawn bird swap on Swap-bot (http://www.swap-bot.com/swap/show/116306). It is a sweet pink flamingo combined with a stamped background. When I saw the envelope, the first thing that caught my eye were the postage stamps - "Polska." The envelope came all the way from Poland. I thought of my maternal grandmother, born in 1910. Her parents immigrated to the United States from Poland right before she was born in the early 1900s. I don't really know much about them but I do know that their last name was Parrish. They settled in Rockdale, Joliet. I remember visiting my grandmother during summers, playing canasta, and how spotless her tiny house was. Thank you Aiah for your card which came all the way from Poland and for letting me think about her today.

Here is what Aiah sent to me:

"Flamingo" © 2012 Aiah

And below is a scanned image of what I sent out for this swap. I titled it, "Wildbird." We live in the Austin area and as you may be aware of, last summer there was a terrible drought in Texas. The state suffered from a heat wave and wild fires which raged for weeks. All of this lead to a water shortage and restrictions. When we moved into our little house the front yard was decimated from the heat and we couldn't do anything about it. When the winter rains came I was surprised and happy to see that the grass recovered in the yard and grew in quite nicely except for in the front. Instead of grass we just got weeds. Icky Texas weeds that burrow their roots down deep, spread out horizontally across the grass and produce little sharp burrs that stick into your hands when you try to dig them out. So, we did what any other good Texan would do, we cut it and pretended it was grass. Well, being a Wisconsin native, I just could stand it so long and this past week, on my hands and knees, I dug and pulled and removed every single weed from the front yard, leaving nothing but bare dirt and in the process exposing every fire ant, grub, beetle, and spider - - a fantastic day for the birds who waited patiently for the bounty. So, when I went to draw this card I had these little brown and yellow-ish birds in mind, as they were the ones who sat by, watching me work and then had themselves a snack. I drew this with ink and used watercolors to color in the bird and stamp ink along the edges of the card. This card was mailed out to KatarinaNavane of Athens, Ohio. I hope you like it.


"Wildbird" © 2012, Mary Garcia