37/52 Bird a week - Last baby bird of summer

While most birds lay their eggs in spring or at the beginning of summer, many will also lay more than one brood. This leads to new babies throughout the summer and this week, I saw what I think is the last baby bird of summer:

Last (bronze) baby bird of summer

His nest is in one of the olive trees - and you can see he is a typical hungry baby - beak wide open!  No doubt his parents will be happy when he fledges and can find his own food.......or maybe that will be a sad time?  There are lots of "empty nesters" out there right now - kids gone off to university or start of their adult life.....Maybe the parents will look longing back on those busy times.... Do you have an empty nest?...or is your last baby bird still with you?

PS The baby bird and nest are made from fastfire Bronzclay, in case you were interested.

Here are links to other birds discovered this week:

35/52 - Bird a week - Peek a boo!

Look who I saw peaking out of her little hole in one of the olive trees today:

A sweet little bronze birdie called "peek-a-boo", coming out to say hello. 

As I've been working in steel clay for the last couple of weeks, I thought I should re-try bronze again.  The steel clay requires firing in charcoal - as does the bronze and copper clays.  I've had good success with the steel clay firings so figured I'd use the same set up for the bronze.  I made two little pieces - one will have to wait until next week!  They both fired well and easily. I was using fastfire bronzclay. The bronze was lovely to carve into - soft and sand-like. The firing was only 2 hours from start to finish.

I think she has taken up permanent residence in that tree and I'm going to leave her there and see if anyone else ever finds her!  Remember, if you ever come and visit - don't forget to look for peek-a-boo!

Gosh - week 35 of the year already and September starts tomorrow.  That means only 17 more birds to make this year for our year long challenge!

Check out the links below to see what others have been making for their weekly bird:

Expressive birds

So I wonder if you noticed anything different about my bronze bird that I photographed yesterday???

If you look carefully, you may see that, unlike my other birds, this little bronze guy has eye lids and eye brows too!  and yes, a little topknot feather.  Can you see?

I guess my not including eye lids before was an anatomical error as all birds have eye lids. In fact birds have three eye lids - an upper one, a lower one and a nictitating membrane.  Unlike us, however, their moveable lid is the lower one.  As that looks a little odd to us - I gave this guy moveable upper lids instead!

And as for the eyebrows?  Well - no. Birds don't have eyebrows - but I have artistic license!

So how come my new bird has two new anatomical features?  Well, I started a cartooning class last week!  I can't draw and don't particularly want to learn to draw "regular" things - but I thought cartooning might be fun.

When I met my tutor, he'd looked at my website and jewelry etc and he decided that I was a "three dimensional cartoonist!"  I like that phrase!  I started work on drawing cartoons based on Humphrey and Trisha ...... I have a lot to learn but in the process we spoke about expressions and how eye lids and eye brows add to expressions - and voila!  My sculpted birds now have lids and brows so I can start working on different expressions!

I have my second lesson today.  Looking forward to it.  I can see that my sculpting and my cartooning will be switching back and forth with me learning things in one and adding it to the other and vice versa!  And my goal is to be able to show you some little cartoons here on my blog.  Hope they won't cause too many raised eye brows!