The Flamingo Fandango

I've been thinking a lot about the tropics lately.  A client has ordered exotic animals for a card series, so now I am deeply immersed in the rain forest. flamingo communes and plants that look like they might eat babies.

Below are some of the more benign plants.  I had several of these palms and banana trees in my yard in the Philippines.
I am using water color, acrylic gouache and an old fashioned sort of cross hatching technique.  Very soothing....a book on tape, tiny brushes, toucan on the ceiling, bromelliads on the brain....late at night.....  I invented the red berried fruit tree.  I'll call them beeble berries in honor of Little Lulu.

Obsessive compulsive bird that I am, I sold 430 POTTED plants alone when we left for the US.  I  kept repotting and repotting...especially the large leaved begonias.  It was life or death.  The plants would have crept into our bedrooms during rainy  season and strangled us all in their green vines.

Let's do the Flamingo shuffle....1, 2, 3, weave and bob and clash our beaks.....