Count me among the millions enamored of those strange birds Mother Nature garbs in the most exotic finery yet makes the comic relief when it comes to songbird status. Peacocks are hardly the scaredy-pants of the menagerie, but you’d never guess it when you hear their guttural squawks of Help! Help!! across the way. From what I’ve seen, this propensity for sounding the alarm does in fact make them rather handy gatekeepers for herd and flock, but as for any timidity, that seems to be far outweighed by their curiosity, which instead makes them as bold as their colors would imply.
The Love Song of Alfred J. Peacock
All of this makes them quite fascinating to me, and not only so because of my persistent attraction to all things gloriously colorful and iridescent. It also, serendipitously, makes them relatively approachable when they don’t feel threatened, so besides being photogenic they are also photograph-able. So I have a small but nice collection of peacock portraits and closeups of their dramatically beautiful details from which I can make playful peacock artworks. I share here a trio of my ‘recombinant peacock’ digital pieces using the same elements I’ve shot to create slightly different effects.
Psychedelic Peacocks
The peacocks gave their tacit permission. And I, magpie-type bird that I am, can’t help but oblige. Help! Help!! Help!!!
Peacock Moire
Art-Colored Glasses 
I think the last one is the best. Very nice !
My favorite of the three, too. 🙂 So glad you like!
OO there is the Duke, better put him on the wall too!! c
This peacock was a wonderfully serendipitous acquaintance: I was actually at the local aquarium in Tacoma and a noisy group of school children was passing through the area I was in, so I stepped aside to let them have their time in the space, walking over to a nearby window. It looked out onto a peaceful deck; I was enjoying my meditations when this big peacock strutted along the deck handrail and stared in the window at *me*. Mutual admiration society, maybe? Though I’m quite certain my plumage didn’t begin to compare with his, so perhaps he was just reminding me who was meant to be the center of attention. I did go outside and photograph him and his cousins for a while later, given that broad hint!
they are SO nosy. Kupa is always right in the thick of things glaring the other flocks into submission.. c
Stunning Kathryn!
Somehow it doesn’t surprise me that you would approve of peacocks too! 🙂
xoxo
My family would visit one of Dad’s friends, a retired doctor that owned a farm with a number of “exotics.” I doubt he would be able to keep most of them today, no matter how well he cared for them. I remember seeing the peacocks strutting about and I’ve been “enamored” with them ever since. Who could resist? Beautiful artwork in today’s post, Kathryn.
Thank you, my dear John! Yes, I know there are good reasons for restricting the personal husbandry of ‘exotics’–but as much as some people abhor the whole idea of confined or domesticated animals, I for one am grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to know, appreciate and admire many species I’d never have even heard of if not in a zoo, and I treasure fond memories too of neighboring peacocks, opportunistically hybridized coyote dogs and the like. Nature *is* resilient, but not so much so that we can’t sometimes assist her by teaching, observing and even encouraging survival among non-humans as well as our own species. I’ll bet the doctor was a fun man to visit!