Bluebird, aka Robin Redbreast

sketchbook page of birds

Work in Progress

One of my summer art projects this year will be for the Quilt County exhibit I’m doing with Loosely Bound.  Our theme is New York Beauty, a traditional quilt pattern, but naturally many of us will be doing non-traditional takes on the theme.  For starters, I stumbled upon the fact that the bluebird is the state bird of New York, and used to be known as Robin Redbreast because of similarities to the robin.  Many sketches from the early 20th century also indicate that they have been confused with swallows, probably because of their wonderful swooping flights.

So over the last few days I’ve been surfing around to see what pops up for bluebirds, and these are some of my favorites.  That little patch of color with the sketch is what Photoshop always displays when you save a file for the web, and it intrigues me.  In and of itself it’s a great color exercise, someday I may start a series of fiber pieces using those… And in the weird coincidence department, the New York state animal is the same as Oregon’s – beaver!