Blackburnian Warbler. Photo by Patrice Bouchard at Unsplash.
Why Small Birds?
A small bird lands in the branches ahead of you. You raise your binoculars, searching through the leaves. For a second, you find it: an eye, a slender bill, a patch of color you hadn’t expected. Then it moves, and you have to find it all over again.
That’s often how we meet small birds—in glimpses. They move through trees and shrubs, appearing just long enough to make us wonder what we saw. Even a bird we recognize can be hard to really see. There’s seldom time to take in the shape of a feather, the expression of an eye, or the way it holds itself on a branch.
The Small Bird Collection began with a wish to give these birds more time.
I’m drawn to the ones that ask us to look again: warblers, chickadees, finches, and other small birds whose lives unfold around us, often faster than we can follow. A bird may be familiar by name or song, yet still hold details I’ve never noticed. Drawing gives me a reason to linger with those details.
Colored pencil is a slow medium. I build a drawing through many small marks, returning again and again to the bird’s color, form, and light. Field observation and research are part of the process, too. I want to understand more about the bird I’m drawing, even as I try to capture what made me stop and look in the first place.
I think of these drawings as portraits of living individuals. Each bird belongs to a species, of course, but it also has a particular pose and presence. I’m interested in both: the details that help us recognize a bird and the qualities that make us want to keep looking at this one.
The collection includes birds drawn on paper and birds drawn on translucent drafting film, with colored paper behind them. The materials give me different ways to set off each portrait, but my hope for every piece is the same: that the bird has room to be seen.
Each original also comes with a short Field Note. It’s a place to share some of the observation, research, and curiosity behind the artwork—and perhaps offer one more thing to notice the next time you encounter that bird outdoors.
A small bird in the wild may give us only a second before it disappears into the leaves. These portraits offer a longer look. I hope one of them stays with you when you’re outside, and that the next time a little bird catches your eye, you’ll pause to see what else you can find.
