Two Birds With One Stone: Bird Painting by kto ART

Two Birds With One Stone: Gentoo Penguins with Mating Pebble

Since I began painting cutesy birds and the like, friends and family have offered up lots of ideas for me to use in future paintings. I absorbs all these suggestions and create compositions with them in mind. This idea came from my friend Jesse who threw it out there yesterday and I said, "yes, I am using that one"...

I had to totally twist around the meaning however, because the original phrase refers to killing two birds with one stone. Not so good for my kind of painting. So I started thinking about what type of bird I would use with what kind of stone. Finches with a river stone? Eagles with a boulder? Then I remembered that penguins have a tradition involving a pebble. If you haven't heard of this tradition, it's amazing. When a male finds the lady of his dreams and wants her to be his everlasting mate, he searches for the perfect pebble as a token of his undying affection. If he choses incorrectly, she will not give him a second look, so it's crucial that he picks the right one. If the lady penguin accepts the male penguin's pebble, they become monogamous mates for life. No matter how far away they are from each other, over glacier and frozen sea, the two will continue to search for each other forever.

Gives new meaning to another phrase, "did you see the rock he gave her?"