Creating the 2025 Bird Calendar

Painted in Watercolour with just a dash of salt and a little pen & ink for the branch…

Spend a couple of days with me as I add to the bird collection and paint the monthly models for the 2025 Garden Birds Calendar

Preparing The Table

Never have I ever painted a series of twelve watercolours. My ADHD brain can’t cope with more than three… Unless it turns out the subject is birds, in which case I can paint and paint and paint.

Nah, that’s abit of a lie. I did really have to think hard about the overall goal of a calendar, left to my own devices I’d have gotten bored. Since I already had 4 or 5 birds in the bag and knowing I’d set myself a goal of a Calendar this year I knew I had no choice but continue to watercolour the next 7 bad boys - or birds. I’ve learnt the best way to make myself sit and watercolour for a full day is to really set up my creative space before hand. Get everything ready, light a candle, put flowers in a vase and tape my paper nice and neatly. I’ve learnt over the past few years that the set up is half your journey to a painting you’ll be proud of.

I already had a Dunnock, Song Thrush, Wren & Robin from my Monthly Illustration Club and a blackbird from my Journal. That left seven birds to go.

So one May day I set the kitchen table up (It was pretty cold and I wanted to be cosy in the house not out in the garden room). My SW Botanical candle lit, my paper taped and my easle looking inviting, I went for it. I had already spent an evening drawing the birds ready to trace onto watercolour paper. Again, prepping all of these first is half way to keeping myself going. If I had to draw each bird after painting the last there is noway I would have finished them.

The older I get the more accepting I am of my brain, my lack of follow through, the unifinshed projects and ideas and the better I am at working with it rather than against it.

Anyway, 1 day in may I finished with 4 full bird paintings…

Blue Tit

Great Tit

Chaffinch

Goldfinch.

Another 3 were finished on a beautiful sunny day in June

House Sparrow

House Martin

Swallow

Sketching & tracing the Birdies - Day 1

Oooh Gary Great Tit is finished, did you forget to take photos of the process Brooke? Looks like it.
3 birds left to paint - Day 2
It’s june for this one and it’s starting to look a little more like Summer so we’re in the Garden Room. We meaning me and probably a dog or two. The kids are at nursery. Nobody is whacking 3 bird paintings out with house monsters hanging off the ankles.
Again, table is set up perfectly, I will always be doing this from now on when I really need to focus. The 20 minutes to make a coffee and pick the flowers is absolutely worth it. I didn’t get photos of my sketches and now they’re somewhere hiding in a box but again I drew all the birds first before tracing and painting. It’s so much easier this way.

Still half painted House Sparrow. I did finish him I promise allthough I have no proof.

And one photo of a half finished swallow

So that’s the painting of the birdies. There were so many evenings following this where I typed in dates and boxes and moons and so on into the computer to create the calendar but I got no photo of it , and If i did I’m sure it would have been pretty boring so we’re not missing out.

Now hang on let me see if I can find some OLD photos from when I painted the first 5 birds and then we’re good, you can leave none the wiser with less of your life left to live. But, you will have seen a glimpse into my watercolour process and maybe that’s worth something? Probably not but anyway. Have a fabulous time with whatever you’re doing and make sure you have tea bags and cake in the house!