This week I really got into the flow of my project. I began going out every day and making a sort of map of where different birds are when. Prospect Park has become a larger part of my project than I previously imagined. The wide-open meadows and semi-open forest areas are ideal for bird watching and photography. I went on an evening walk at around 5 every day in my neighborhood as well. Because of who is awake when in my house, my time for painting has become after dinner, which actually works very well for me. Towards the end of this week, I began planning a larger painting that wasn’t open air or from a photograph I took, though I decided to dedicate another blog post solely to the painting.

The painting I learned the most from this week was one of a mockingbird flying. I’ve been watching the mockingbirds that live somewhere on my block and they are quite entertaining! They have a beautiful white flair on the underside of their wings, that when they fly flashes in a very beautiful way. Seeing these birds fly by quickly was the impetus for this painting, and I followed them around until I got a suitable picture. I was lucky to be able to watch and photograph a squabble between two mockingbirds. I am unsure whether this was a territorial squabble or a courtship dance, a question that is popping up again and again while I watch these birds….

Every night since quarantine began, my family and I have been watching an episode of BBC’s Planet Earth, so for my first painting, I wanted to memorialize that by painting a still from the episode we watched that night. Otherwise, all the paintings except for the second one are either open-air or of pictures I took in the neighborhood. I think this is important because I want my neighborhood to be reflected in both the scientific and artistic aspects of my project.

Moving forward, I want to continue painting birds. I am working on how to use brushstrokes that from far away really imitate how we see bird feathers. I also want to really begin to understand where different birds reside in prospect park and why.