A Spring Update

It's been a minute since my last blog post!

February was a busy month for me so I accidentally neglected this blog (shout out to the 7 people who read it!). I had some illustrating projects on the go, then I spent a week with my little sister while my parents travelled. Towards the end of the month I experienced a death in the family and since then I've been in a slump and haven't painted or posted a whole lot. I have a few ideas rattling around in my noggin but when I have stress or sadness in my personal life it makes it hard for me to focus on the things I love doing.

March is a new month and brings a new season- the transition from winter to spring is always very inspiring to me and will hopefully bring about some new ideas for some artworks and act as a motivator to actually sit down and paint something. The spring migration has begun and already I'm started to see new birdies at my feeder in the morning, all of which would make wonderful art subjects. Once the snow melts a bit more I will take a drive out to the provincial park near me for the first time this year and see what I can see.

I can't remember if I mentioned this in a previous blog post or not, but during one of my hikes last year I stumbled across an ecological reserve that is tucked away deep in the pines; in the middle of this ecological reserve is a small lake- well, maybe more like a deep swamp, probably no deeper than 6 feet in most places. I had gone in the middle afternoon during a late spring snow storm and stood on the muddy shore of this swamp with my binoculars to see what I could spot. By some magical stroke of luck, a pair of trumpeter swans heard me and swam towards me to investigate. They stayed about 50 yards from the shore, honking and hollering at me, probably wanting me to get lost because I was interrupting their nest-making. On average they usually only lay one or two eggs a year, making them very valuable to their population .

I'm hoping to experience another encounter with some beautiful birds this spring. I heard some where that trumpeter swans return to the same nesting site year after year, maybe I will get lucky and see them again.