Paint Party Friday: Wild October Art

 Good morning and welcome to Paint Party Friday! I hope you had a creative week. For me it was, but I was not only palying with paints, but also with Lego (yes, release that inner child! *LOL*). You can see my builds here, if you like.

But back to painting. I colored last week's woodpecker with watercolor pencils. This is very common bird around here, that visits feeders on a regular basis and can be seen in parks and cities, too.  Although it is not endangered, we must be careful, that is stays that way, as the  bird needs old forests with hollow trees to hatch his eggs.

Later this week I found a new interesting daily drawing challenge on Twitter and joined in wtih some Wild October Art (look for the hashtag #wildoctoberart, if you like to see others joining this challenge by Zoe Keller). For the prompt "Metamorphosis" I drew the life cycle of the antlion (called "doodlebug" in American English :D).

The larvae of the antlion (the real "ant lions") dig holes in the ground, shaped like funnels, and if an insect falls in there, it glides down, "supported" by the ant lion by throwing sand. My parents have some of these funnels in their garden, and if you throw in a little stick or leave, the ant lion starts throwing sand. So funny (ok, not for the insects falling in)!

For the prompt "Misunderstood" I drew a White Shark. Since JAWS these animals don't have a good reputation. :(

And then there was the prompt "Animals in Love". That was the perfect time to finalle draw my Fischer's Lovebirds Amelia and Erhard (yes, they are named after Amelia Earhart), as these two are seriously in love. First there was a pencil sketch.

Then I added some color with colored pencils. I still have so much to learn, but they came out pretty nice and I think I caught their sweet little characters pretty good.

Here's the original photo from three years ago. They were on their first flight through my apartment and decided to sit on top of a pile of roadmaps (errr, excuse the dust!). 

These two have the sweetest character, as long as there are no eggs involved. Then they turn into a mix of pitbull and T-Rex to defend their cage. Amelia laid around 25 eggs in the three years we have her (maybe she was a chicken in her former life). Although I can't let them hatch the eggs (I usually take the real ones and put in some fake eggs made from polymer clay), they both feel safe enough to carry on with brooding and I'm sure they would make great parents.

So I hope you enjoyed my nature drawings and the bit of information. See you while blog hopping during the weekend! :)