Garden of Sparrows
- Kaaren Poole
- Oct 6
- 5 min read
Hearing a Bible verse about sparrows recently reminded me of how much I’ve enjoyed seeing the sparrows in my garden this year. In the spring, I built and put up five birdhouses, and they were all quickly claimed by sparrows. I watched them diligently build their nests then raise their families, and much to my delight they’ve stayed nearby ever since. I so appreciate their lively and mostly cheerful presences! So, I decided they would be the theme for my next art journal spread.
I started working on it by drawing several sparrows and then over the weekend I began on the spread itself. Here’s where I am so far:
Planting the Garden of Sparrows
When I began, I really had nothing in mind other than the basic concept and the drawings. So, at that point the blank spread was sort of intimidating. Where to start?
I cut the sparrows out of the pages on which I’d drawn them and then experimented with where to place them on my spread. By doing that, I began to envision them in the thick of the roses. And, of course, I had one that was flying, so he pointed out there needed to be some sky somewhere. This beginning phase is one of my favorites because there are so many possibilities, and I must choose one. It feels like both a puzzle and an adventure.
As it happened, I had some napkins with a blue floral design on a white background. Perfect! The blue of the sky and the flowers and leaves of the garden. I proceeded to cover the whole spread with them. And that’s where I encountered my first problem, although I didn’t know it right away.
Napkin Error!
When I returned to the project the next day, I began adding thinned gesso to lessen the contrast of the blue and white pattern and in some places, I wanted to nearly obscure it. But the napkin wasn’t properly glued down and began to move and shred!
When I was gluing the napkin down the previous day, I tried to separate the top, printed layer from the two white ones below. In my experience, napkins were three-ply. But with this one, I could only separate it into two, so I proceeded with that. But there were three layers after all and what I’d tried to glue down was actually a double layer rather than just the top, printed one.
Naturally, when I continued to work over it, it began to shred. So, I spent quite a bit of time removing what I’d glued down originally, then persisting in separating the layers of another napkin until I had finally liberated the top layer of three to glue down—essentially, beginning again! But that was OK. Lesson learned.
By the way, I found that when you tear the napkin in one direction, it tears in a pretty straight line. But when you try to tear it the other way, there’s a very ragged edge. This ragged edge can be annoying, but I found it easier to separate the layers along that ragged edge.
Now For the Garden
What a work-out that napkin had given my patience. So it was a nice break to look through my stash of floral images and pick some out for the spread. I chose a few small images of peach-colored pansies along with larger apricot/peach rose blossoms from an old David Austin Roses catalog. I thought that the peach/apricot colors would make a nice trio with the blue in the napkin background and the green foliage. But, even more than that, I thought that peach/apricot would be a nice repeat for the warm browns in the sparrows’ plumage.
In fact, I decided I’d begin the sparrows with colors that were a little more brilliant than they really are. I saw that my background would be pretty strong in color and value contrast and that I’d have to find a way for the birds to stand out against it. That’s for later, but it’s good to think of it ahead of time.
A Quandary
As I began to arrange my floral clippings and bird cut-outs on the spread, I quickly realized I needed some green in parts of the background, so I added it with acrylic paint and alcohol ink blobs. I really like those blobs! But then my garden of sparrows posed a difficult question.
A real garden has depth. Some flowers lay behind others. Birds are partly obscured by foliage or flowers in front of them. In other words, as we look at a garden, we see layers of images, not just a mass of flowers with the sparrow cut-outs sitting on top of them. How would I achieve this layering in my spread?
I’ve done layering lots of times, building them up a bit at a time and not being terribly worried about some images interfering with others. But somehow my sparrow garden seemed different. My main images—the birds—would be tucked between layers. How could I achieve that without knowing how the whole finished piece should look? If I were doing a drawing or planning a painting, it wouldn’t be such a problem because I would be planning the whole design and then creating and refining it. But with found objects, it would be a whole different process where the overall design would grow organically. It’s hard to explain, but I hope I’m making some sense.
In the end, I decided not to tuck the birds between images. Instead, I’d paint or collage details over them later.
When in Doubt, Cut out Leaves
So I glued my images down, then took up the soothing process of cutting out leaves from scraps from the floral images—bits with medium and dark green from the foliage around the roses. Having cut them, I decided I may as well glue them down, and that’s where I stopped to let things settle in my mind for a few days.
By the way, the silver thing in the upper left is just a faux wax seal that had been on the wrapper of a fancy soap. It was sitting on my worktable and it caught my eye. I decided to see how it looked on the spread. It’s not glued on. It’s just sitting there. It’s pretty thick, and if I were to glue it on it would interfere with closing the book. But I like it. It nothing else, it suggesting the possibility of adding metallic silver to the spread in some way. I had been initially thinking of gold. I like silver better though.
Here are a few detail views. I always find it fun to look for parts that might stand nicely on their own. And you can really see the texture of that napkin!
I have a YouTube channel and there are several videos there about art journaling, as well as art project videos. You can access my channel by clicking the button below. Why not check it out? And if you like what you see, please subscribe. Subscribing is free and helps my videos get found.
I publish a weekly email newsletter, An Artful Path, which contains brief articles on art, animals, writing, the garden, and musings on life. You can subscribe on the home page of my website (just click the button below and scroll to the bottom of the page). Don't forget to claim your thank you gift for subscribing. And while you're on my website, www.KaarenPoole.com, take a look around!
Your email address is safe with me. I don't share that information with anyone! And you can unsubscribe at any time.
Comments