Imaginary Macaws

Hi everyone. Happy almost weekend. This upcoming weekend is the long Memorial Day weekend here in the US. Not only is it a weekend to remember those who serviced their country and lost their lives, but it is the unofficial start of the summer "season".

The other day I shared some tropical toucans that I saw in Costa Rica, and today I will share another bird I saw while on that trip many years ago, the Scarlet Macaw. OK my bird today isn't exactly a scarlet macaw, just inspired by them, as this bird is more of a species I created for my page using a stencil that looks like a macaw's body.

Macaws are one type of parrot. The little info blurb I included is about a species in the parrot family found in Australia, where macaws are NOT found, but I liked having the info on my page as it makes my imaginary parrot look like a more official species. Smile.

My background is a mix of different watercolor paints as well as some stamped images. The macaw is stenciled and then colored with watercolor markers, a black marker and a white pen. I drew in the branch and then used many Art by Marlene punch out leaves on the branch. I also  added some mini flowers as this tropical tree that have many types of leaves is flowering. I also added some details to those leaves.

Does my parrot work for Nicole's Face Off challenge? He does have quite a face!

A couple of you asked about my school trip to Costa Rica (which was back in 2013) after reading my toucan post. This trip was a cultural immersion trip to a very small town in in the wilds of the Osa Peninsula, which is in the rain forest. This trip was just for teachers, although the school ran a similar trip for students during the school year. (We went in the summer.) We spent much of our week working in local schools and other than the first couple and last nights where we stayed in a private hostel, we lived with locals for the rest of the time. I stayed with a lovely family who I still keep in touch with through  Facebook. 

 I could also earn graduate credits for like $100 (that was a deal for sure), and besides getting to see some of Costa Rica, I was able to bounce up my credits and reach the next credit level for pay raise too when I returned to school in the fall.  It was win-win situation, but even if I didn't have the grad school opportunity, just visiting Costa Rica was amazing.

We did get to do a few other things when we weren't working in the schools.  We took a rain forest hike; I rode my first horse; we visited a sustainable chocolate farm (the best coco ever as we made it from scratch-starting with roasting the coco beans), and we also took a boat trip to an eco friendly resort. We didn't get to stay at the resort, but we learned about being eco-friendly in Costa Rica and also had an amazing boat trip seeing dolphins and humpback whales.  Since the whole area we stayed in was rainforest, we saw lots of wildlife and local plants. And we had noisy howler monkeys wake us at  like 3 AM. This was my first and only (so far) trip to a Central American tropical rainforest. It was eye-opening, both literally and figuratively.   It was a great experience, and I'm very glad I decided to do it when I had the opportunity. 

Here's a few photos I posted back in August and September of 2013. There's more in various posts I put up at the time.  I'll start with a sign from the eco-resort.

Here's some beautiful tropical flowers,

and some leaf cutter ants carrying their prices along an ant trail.

I'm not sure what type of hummingbird this was.

This is one of the classrooms we worked in.

A view of the Gulfo (the bay) from the town we stayed in.

A new fruit I tried that was delicious once you pealed away the spiny looking skin called maman-chino. It is so called rambutan.

Grinding our roasted coco beans for hot coco.

Another view of the shore from town.

And at another school.

One night we visited a Costa Rican bullfight, which was more like a rodeo with bull roping.

And here's a banana flower, and then more tropical blooms.

And finally, I was pretty fascinated by those leaf cutter ants that seemed to be almost everywhere.

I'm glad I had the chance to go on this trip. It was quite the adventure. 

Thanks for visiting.