My pictures of hummingbirds

Ever since I learned a few hummingbird facts in elementary school, I have been fascinated by pictures of hummingbirds. They are some of the most interesting critters in the world, and I'm constantly reminded of my fascination with the natural world when I look at a picture of a hummingbird. Hummingbird have to eat several times their own body weight every day, beat their wings at something like 30 times a second if memory serves me correctly, and can hover effortlessly in the air. Although I like pictures of bald eagles and other majestic birds of the air, the hummingbirds are my favorite. They are so humble and even comical, and yet beneath a strange and sometimes silly exterior lies a marvel of evolution.

I have even started to do a few art prints of hummingbirds myself. At first, I thought the idea was a little bit ridiculous and was embarrassed to even bring it up. I am an amateur artist at best, and very little of the stuff I make is that good. I figured that making my own pictures of humming birds would be embarrassing, but one of my friends encouraged me to go for it. She told me that the important things was to do what I needed to do to express myself. If I was moved to draw pictures of hummingbirds, I should do just that. I took her words to heart and began working on them immediately.

I would consider my pictures of hummingbirds a little bit expressionistic. Trying to draw pictures of hummingbirds that literally portray them seems somewhat ridiculous to me. After all, while they hover in the air their wings move so quickly that you cannot see them at all except as a blur. A literal picture of a hummingbird would capture it frozen in flight not the way that we see it or else show the wings as a vaguely defined blur. This is what makes drawing pictures of hummingbirds so difficult.

When I make pictures of hummingbirds, the important thing for me is not capturing them in literal detail, but instead capturing the impression that they convey. After all, I am not interested in the hummingbird itself, but in the influence and inspiration it has provided me. My pictures of hummingbirds try to convey the wondrous variety of nature, in the same way that pictures of a bald eagle try to convey the majesty of it.