Belle's Birds

Click on photo to enlarge, click again to view details.

Alright, this should be the last tease before the whole kitchen is unveiled.  Here's one of the upper cabinets, graced by the neighbor's apple tree, and one of the resident mourning doves.  I love painting animals I haven't painted before.  I check out every book from the library across the street with pictures of the subject (It's a tiny library, so it's not like I'm stressing the 100 book limit), and really research the details.  This dove was a little fluffed up, compared to the sleeker poses of the others, but it made it more interesting to paint, being able to see more individual feathers.  Amazing how many details and shades of color there are on a plain gray bird!  Yup, another trip through the brambles, and don't even get me started on the endless possibilities for apple varieties.

Someone asked about "Belle's" Kitchen, and I realize it's been about a year and a half since I introduced Belle Amie, whose name is French for Beautiful Friend.  Belle is a 1906 post-Victorian eclectic with hints of neoclassical influences in th...huh?  Sorry.  Belle is a big white quirky confection of a house, built by Friend J. Whitlock, in the very heart of downtown Belle Plaine.  She has a huge front porch, a back parlor that makes a perfect art studio, a brilliant pink stained glass window in the entry, and three mismatched fanlight windows in her huge attic.  She's asymmetrical, quirky, beautiful and charming to the core...like all my best girlfriends!

She's also far from finished, in the decorating sense of things, and as she's supposed to be a showcase for my work, I'm pushing hard not to be another one of those about whom people say "Oh, you know, it's like the shoemaker whose kids go barefoot..." (Does anybody say that anymore?  Do kids even know that there used to be shoemakers, before there were sweatshops in third world countries???  Oops, wrong blog.)  Anyway, tune in next Friday morning for what I sincerely, wholeheartedly, please Dear God let it be true, hope will be the unveiling of the finished kitchen, painted fully, floor to ceiling.