As my most popular cards recently appear to be my "birds in 13 minutes" (people keep asking me for them, but they've already flown the coop), I have resolved this weekend to see how many bird portraits I can rustle up within 2 hours.
So keep watching to see my progress!
Species I must draw - duck or owl for Jake, a parrot for Timeinmyhands and something for Wrick.
Today I bring to you Klassic Kiwiana Kitsch
Three cards for Artree/Ahtree. Two are based on classic Kiwiana - little quirky things that symbolise the essence of New Zealand, the other is a fruit. She asked for fruit that was uniquely ours - well, we don't really have anything interesting like pineapples or what not and even kiwifruit (which ARE kiwiana) are actually from China. So what we have here is:
Happy Takahe Hen and tussock grass
Happy Hens are folk art ceramic hens that are made in Dunedin, NZ and are one of those popular, iconic, souvenirs, the takahe is a particularly rare flightless rail that spent 40 years being extinct until found in an isolated Fiordland valley by a dedicated conservationalist. There are two species of tussock grass featured here and one tussock flower - all good takahe food.
Buzzy Bee and Tomato Sauce Bottle
Buzzy Bees are bright, cheerful wooden pull-along toys that are one of our most well known icons. Most Kiwi kids had them. The squeezable Tomato bottle in the shape of... a tomato ... is found in most Kiwi kitchens. NZ flag is one of the unofficial "lets redesign the NZ flag so it's less English and more us) Thei s the Jeffy James style.
Bush Snowberry (Takapo)
Like most of our native fruit, NZ snowberry is small and realatively unexciting. I'm not even sure you can eat them, but the birds did, before we killed off nearly all of the fruit-dispersing birds leaving only the kaka and kereru common enough to disperse them.
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