Splashing Through Life - Art by Patricia Henderson

I decided to work on a companion piece to "Puzzled". I had such fun with that one, I thought I'd go the same route again! You can't drive very far in the country around here without seeing one of these guys. The Red-Winged Blackbird and it's song really says summertime to me. I decided to call this one "Country Singer". The background is covered with old sheet music and the bird and cattails are small pieces of hand painted paper and a few pieces of other found papers. This and Puzzled will be entered into the Annual Desmond Juried Art Exhibition and Sale this summer.

My newest collage painting "Our Daily Bread" and two others, "Frenemies" and "Marshland Morning" have been accepted into the 7th Annual Desmond Juried Art Show and Sale. Stop on by the Ridgetown Campus of the University of Guelph from July 22-August 2, 2012 and check them out! Our Daily Bread Frenemies Marshland Morning (formerly titled Elegant Ecosystem)

Finally I have finished the heron! I've also done the red-winged blackbird and have started on the cattails. The turtle and frog will be difficult, I think, because of the tiny details. This can be very frustrating, as I learned with the blackbird's eye. I had the tiny circle all cut out to the right size, only to have it fall off the tip of my finger and disappear! This only happened three times before I got it to stick! Anyway, I am going to try and work like a fiend today and get it done. (or at least very close!). I want to get it submitted to the contest, plus I need to get started on a Christmas watercolour commission.

Today I started to block in the colours in the underpainting. As you can see it looks really rough, but it will all be covered in paper eventually. The paint acts as a guide for me and also to test colours and values.

I discovered a great art contest the other day called  Eco Arts Awards . I thought it would be a great contest to enter. Artists will submit artwork with their interpretation  of the meaning of Ecology.  The first thing that sprang to mind was Wetlands. I love Great Blue Herons, so I thought I'd make one the main focus, and also in keeping with the ecology theme, I'll be using my paper collage process, using primarily papers recycled from old books and magazines if I can. I found my heron reference from  Paint My Photo  a great website where photographers can post their photos for artists to use as copyright free reference material. Thanks Tracee Murphy for the great photo! After doing a couple of thumbnail sketches, I drew my scene onto a 24 X 12" canvas. Since this piece will be fairly complicated I will loosely paint it first with acrylics to give me a guideline while applying the papers. Here is my drawing so far. I will be fixing that poor dragon...