Little Birds

copyright Barbara Di Lella sparrows pencil 2013

Just a few quick sketches of some sparrows. With all the reading I have been doing lately on wildlife artists, I was reminded of such names as Thomas Bewick, J. Audubon, Edward Lear, John Gould, Joseph Wolf, John Keulemans and Archibald Thorburn. Some of these names are quite well known, others...

"Yellow Owl" byThomas Bewick, "Bewick's Animal Woodcuts", Dover,2004

There are so many artists from the past that have paved the way to where we are now and so little, if anything, is known about them. I often wonder if I would be somewhere else with my work if I knew of the works of certain artists when I was first going to art classes. Other than Audubon, I had never heard of the other artists I have listed. And for sure, there are those from other countries that are rarely heard of: Bruno Liljefors and Leo-Paul Robert, to name a couple that I have recently come across. Let alone those in Japan, China, Russia...

In the meantime, one thing leads to another and I'm sure to learn more as I keep reading. I have tracked down a few books and I hope to find more.

Enjoy your mid-week

Hope it's not

too cold for you