H is for Hummingbird

Hello Beautiful People!

As of this morning, I'm excited to say that we've reached the halfway mark, both in the duration of my Kickstarter campaign and in the fundraising goal! And since we're on the subject of halfway.....I will also report that I am well on my way to reaching the goal to be halfway done with the birds for this book by the time the Kickstarter portion ends. 

Today I'm here to present my entry for the letter H......my favorite of all, the small but mighty Hummingbird. Those of you who know me personally know that I've have had several of them adopt me over the years. When I get one who sticks around, he (usually a he, and a he who won't let anyone else sup from the feeder) gets a name. Most of my hummingbird names are very very long names from children's literature, such as James James Morrison Morrison Weatherby George Dupree, John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt, or Tikki Tikki Tembo-no Sa Rembo-chari Bari Ruchi-pip Peri Pembo. I also had one named Tweet Seeger, but he had to be rambling along. 

But I digress. Here's my sketchbook page for H:

 H is for Hal,
whose playing was purty,
when hovering over
his pink hurdy gurdy.

H! A hummingbird with a Hungarian hat!

So that's easy to think up and maybe make a rudimentary sketch, but once I started looking into what exactly was a hurdy gurdy......well, I knew I was in for a project. I looked at images and videos on the web to try to understand how it worked, and decided to mainly work off an old illustration to help me distill the most important elements of this complex and ornamental instrument:

Quilters might recognize those flower-shaped pins I used for the tuning keys--I knew that my hurdy gurdy would be pink, so why not make it a little crazy. Here's my finished piece:

 I chose the Anna's Hummingbird because they are the breed that overwinters here in Oregon. I'm not completely thrilled with the angle on the hurdy gurdy in this shot, but that's where the photographer I'll hire comes in handy.

I'll be back in a few days with bird #7! Those of you who have supported my project on Kickstarter, thank you so much! Anyone reading this who's been on the fence, please help make it happen and plan ahead for your holiday shopping by pre-purchasing books or original artwork that will help me fund the photography and printing of this book. Click here to be a part of Alphabird!

For now, I wish you the sweetest of dreams with this snoring hummingbird video from the BBC.  

take care,
Hilary