birds

An ordinary sparrow

| Anna Cull
‘The soul within sings’ sketches – ink on paper, 2012.

Here are a few sparrow sketches for a painting I’m working on at the moment. I plan to enter it in a local art auction/competition which is held annually to promote awareness of chronic pain conditions. This year’s theme is ‘the soul within’.

The brick represents chronic pain (in my case, migraines and RSI/OOS) — enduring, exhausting, crippling pain. The sparrow represents hope of the soul — ordinary, everyday, garden-variety hope. On a good day, the soul within sings.

I may be wrong but I think my last — and only — art competition was when I was a teenager (maybe 13 or 14). It was a chalk drawing (on a sidewalk) of The Wizard of Oz. And I won. The prize was two tickets to see a live version of the musical. Ironically, I couldn’t use the tickets because of a monster migraine which hospitalised me.

Funny old thing, life.

Two birds, one stone.

| Anna Cull
Sparrow sketch – ink on paper, 95 x 105 mm, 2012.

Actually, it’s one bird and a rock — but that’s not the point.

I’m going to be working on a painting for an art auction/competition this week (at least that’s the plan) and I thought I’d make a start on the sketches for that project and write to my friend at the same time. We always include a sketch in our letters to each other, so here is the little sparrow I drew for her.

I hope she doesn’t read this post before she gets the letter.

Kererū

| Anna Cull

I haven’t posted many photographs lately (possibly because I haven’t taken many I really like), so I thought I’d remedy the situation by posting a selection of slightly older images.

This photograph was taken in Nelson several years ago using my (then) brand new Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ20. It may not be brilliant quality by today’s standards, but I still quite like this shot of a New Zealand native wood pigeon (kererū).