I just finished writing about Cows on a Shelf, where I changed the piece eight years after I thought it was finished.
Wild Bird Dream is another one of my pieces of artwork that I changed over time from its original version.
I love the primeval sound of red-bellied woodpeckers make as they fly in the woods. I hear these birds all the time when I am in my garden. So I decided to do a carving which caught the feeling I have when I hear these birds. Below is the first version of Wild Bird Dream. I picked a color scheme (largely red) that I felt would work to set off the colors in the birds. But I simply couldn't get the piece to work, to be finished. I kept painting and repainting it, 3 and 4 times. It just wasn't right. What I was trying to do was to keep the birds' colors accurate to the colors of red bellied woodpeckers while also trying to get the birds to stand out from the background. Here in this first version the colors are accurate but the birds do not stand out.
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