Day 24: Returning to the Feeder: Painting the Tufted Titmouse Again and Again
Today’s painting is of a tufted titmouse, one of my favorite birds to watch at the feeder, and one of the birds I’ve painted a hundred times — but never exactly in the same way.
In a past life, I worked at a paint-and-sip franchise where I stood on a stage with a Britney Spears mic and explained to the crowd that this was “fun art,” not “fine art.” When I was training for the job, the trainer walked us through a painting step by step, and I asked if he always taught it the same way, in the same order, with the same steps.
He looked at me like I had two heads.
“Yes, of course.”
I eventually became that trainer and taught that very same painting to countless groups. And not once did I do it the same way. Not once. I can’t, or I won’t, or maybe I just don’t know how.
Every blank canvas brings an exciting new freshness. I am never the same painter today as I was yesterday. I bring a different history, a different mood — maybe I’ve even woken up from a different dream.
That’s why the subjects I love never lose their pull for me. Whether it’s a daily painting practice or another tufted titmouse painting, I keep coming back. I keep returning to the feeder.
Denise Hopkins
January 24, 2026
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