Flickers and Sorting Paper

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All winter we were visited by a shy and charming flicker. He didn't like me trying to get a close look and I'd only get a glimpse of his plumage. Greys and browns and then those startling flashes of red! Nothing to do but head for my bins of collage paper.

A few months back I had finally taken on the daunting task of corralling my tons of paper -- old prints, hand-stained tissue, clean-up sheets that were too enticing to toss, purchased Asian papers, brown wrapping and packaging, junk mail, envelopes -- into some kind of order. Up to then, I sorted everything (in an off-hand way) by material. Acrylic prints here, Akua prints there, a file for tissue, packaging in this tub, envelopes in this box. But there was simply too much and it took ages to find anything.

Rather than sort by material I came up with the idea of sorting by colour!

And that has worked amazingly well. I took three large bins that were already stuffed with paper and emptied them. Then I did a heartless weed. Stuff went into the recycle bin and out to the curb before I could change my mind. With what remained, I began to sort by colour -- warm, cool and neutral. Besides those three bins there is a bin for commercial stuff like coloured cardstock or origami paper and another bin for blank fine art paper. There are also three or four small tubs for paper bits too good to toss. But the bulk of the "system" is the three bins. Now when I come across something I want to save in it goes to the appropriate bin  and we're done. So far, it's working!

For the flickers I went through the neutral bin for browns and greys and had a quick dig through the warms for a bit of red.

With the help of some online photos and our trusty Roger Tory Peterson bird guide I roughed out a flicker shape and made this jaunty fellow:

This one I counted as my daily sketch. Then I made these:

I went back and forth between making the flicker realistic or more whimsical. Spoiler alert -- whimsy won! I'm not really a bird person and know nothing about their anatomy. Always surprised how far back the legs are attached on a bird's body. Usually my birds look like this:

But it was good practice for my eye and my brain to aim for correct proportion and to pick out one or two telling details that would make my interpretation of a flicker read as a flicker. I'll keep making more of these dapper birds as I come across paper printed with just the right graphic pattern. And, after watching a fascinating Nature of Things documentary, I'm stacking up potential collage papers for owls who, news to me, can have rich russet red feathers! (And those papers will be in the warm bin!)