American Avocet

I found a picture of this bird while surfing the web nearly a year ago.  I printed it out and then it got lost in a drawer somewhere.  I found the picture the other day and realized that I needed to paint it.  I was thinking what could I do to this picture.  There really isn't a lot going on with it.  Just a bird standing there.

So much like the beach here where i live, when you look, the beach just kind of disappears in the distance and the sky starts.  There is no real line of demarcation. I tried to make this painting resemble that.  A nice gentle transition from sand to sky.

As for the bird, i really like everything except its head.  I just don't understand what happended there.  Love the wing, love the underbelly, like the legs.  Head.... meh.   Oh, well,  I guess thats why they call it practice.  Thanks for taking the time to read, and check out the picture.  Hope you enjoyed it.

Student Structures

Students on our campus usually play an active role in shaping the physical landscape of campus.  These first two pictures are houses build by students.  They reside out in the canyon and have not been lived in in quite some time but with a little work could be brought up to date and made live-able.

The final picture is a horse statue that is now it the library.  It is called the living library mustang.  I'm not sure how living it is.  It seems to only have a couple of plants stuck on it after the fact, but..... oh well.  The students build the entire statue from recycled materials.