Folk Art Bird

Seems I've got a thing about birds lately.  It seems to be cropping up in a lot of my artwork, and the other day I even bought a finch feeder.  I have always been fascinated by folk art, so it was very natural for me to choose a bird as my subject for this piece.  Folk art has it's roots with the common people.  It's usually decorative, and done with recycled, found materials by locals with no fine art training.  The bird is cut out of cardboard that I pulled out of recycling, and all the pieces are from bits that I found around the house.  I placed an old skewer to hold it up, and stuck it on a block of wood that I found outside.  To give it an older, distressed look, I used white, dry paint with my favorite fan brush, which is usually put aside specially for painting clouds.  When I showed the kids this particular brush, they were so excited -- it looks so different from their usual brushes, and they each wanted a chance to try out the dry brush technique.