Loose sketch of a red cardinal bird in flight with outstretched wings and tail feathers, drawn in black ink with a pink and red watercolour wash.

Cardinal bird in flight sketch

Colour · Flash

A cardinal bird is shown in mid-flight, with one wing raised high and the tail spread downwards. The bird is drawn with loose, sketchy black ink strokes and feather lines, with a soft red and pink wash filling the body and wings. The plain white background and open composition leave the bird as the sole subject, with a few faint diagonal guide lines crossing the image.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Marguerite, the cardinal came back to the fence this morning, the same red fellow who fought the sparrows for the feeder all last winter, and I set down my tea to watch him. You'll laugh, but I thought of your father's old Vauxhall, the one he kept in the lane until the hedges swallowed it. He used to say a thing that was red as that bird had to be looked after or it would fade to nothing in the rain.

Keep reading

I went out to the bottom of the garden with the trowel and dug up the wallflowers you left in a bucket by the shed. They were half dead, stems grey and sulking, and I planted them where the sun hits the wall after noon. I didn't expect them to take. Yesterday they had a single bloom between them, a rust-coloured thing no bigger than a thumbnail, and I nearly cried over it like an idiot.

The cardinal came down while I was kneeling there, lifted one wing high as if he were hailing a cab, and dropped straight into the lavender. He didn't stay long. He never does. But he left a feather behind on the gravel, bright as a cut of rhubarb, and I've pinned it inside the back of the kitchen drawer where you'll find it when you visit in June.

Come in June, and bring the good secateurs. The wallflowers need cutting back, and I want you to see what they've done.

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