Nano - Blew Crowned Conure, Gift Portrait

Nano smilling

I'm about to begin a new portrait, this time of a beautiful Blue Crowned Conure girl named Nano.

This portrait is a gift to my dear client Carol Thorpe of Happy Tails Rescue, in thanks for entrusting me with numerous portraits of her beloved dogs. Nano is one of seven exotic birds in her care. Carol is not only a dog lover but a bird lover as well. I rarely get to paint birds, so I'm really looking forward to this new challenge. Of course, I could find a picture in a book or on the internet, but then I wouldn't know its personnality and special connection it has with Carol. To me that makes it more worthwhile.

The life span of an exotic bird is equivalent to a human's, so aquiring this type of animal companion is a very, very long term comitment. Carol has got her birds through different circumstances. Nano, her first Conure baby, was bought at a pet store, while Freddie, another of her Conures, had been owned by a family for twenty-five years. Mickey, her Severe Macaw, lived his first ten years elsewhere.

More about my model Nano, through Carol's words:

She is 16 years old. I got her when I went to the pet store to buy a love bird to replace one that I had lost. I looked at her and she put down the toy she was chewing on and said "Hewwow (hello)"and that was it for me. She came home and was my first conure baby. She came to work with me for the first couple of years of her life and is quite socialized. She is the only one of my birds that I have trusted enough to take outdoors without a cage. You can kind of pick her out of the photos. She has the bluest head (it gets increasingly blue with age in her species and she is the oldest) and she has some dignity to her. She can play as well. She only eats pellets that are orange and red or green but not the purple ones.There is a nice photo of Nano with her head fluffed up. That is the bird version of a smile and she does it often. I change the toys in the cages often to keep the birds stimulated but there is one acrylic toys that Nano insists on keeping with her. It has a bell on the bottom and she likes to sit with her head in the bell like a hat. She only talks once in a while.

For Nano's portrait, I thought of purching her on the branch of a lovely Murano glass chandelier. The  chartreuse coloured glass would compliment well Nano's colouring, but only a portion of the chandelier would be shown as to not detract from the gorgeous Nano.

Follow me on this sweet feathery portrait journey.