OK. So. April 8 was Draw a Bird Day -- a just-for-fun observance. To observe it, people drew a bird. On April 8.
Style's story about this, written by Jerry Butler, appeared April 4. Butler mentioned a few people who planned to draw birds. "Hmmm," thought the Style editors. "If they will share their drawings, we can make a gallery for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette's website."
But we figured that Draw a Bird Day was such a goofy idea hardly anyone would do it. So we offered incentives. We would pick one drawing to display on our Style Facebook page in April and thank that artist with a copy of a bird book.
We expected, maybe, 25 drawings. That's a lot. So to make the selection easier (for the Style section editor) staff artist Nikki Dawes would select the honoree.
If you've seen our Style Facebook page (facebook.com/adgstyle), you know what happened. The gallery debuted April 20 with 181 images.
In came drawings in crayon, pencil, pen and ink, pastels. Also paintings, digital art and collages. Two artists painted on gourds. One needle-felted a flamingo.
This was not the "tiny favor" we'd promised Dawes. "I was so blown away by everyone's talent and creativity that it was a tremendous task to even narrow down the entries," she says. Unfortunately, "I fell in love with a part of every submission and found myself going through them repeatedly."
In the end, she selected Swan in a Storm by Phyllis Von Holdt because it looked "at home" in the rectangular photo box atop the Style Facebook page.
Von Holdt and her husband retired to Bella Vista 16 years ago. "Art has always been important to me," she says. "It was my dream to be an artist but, somehow, too many things got in the way until we moved here, and I found some wonderful teachers and a great group of artists to paint with."
Here are just a few of the artworks Dawes admired. All of them can be seen in the "Draw a Bird Day" gallery.
Thanks, everybody!
ActiveStyle on 04/25/2016