A friend flew in for a visit from the city wearing bright red lipstick. While she was standing near the hummingbird feeder she became excited and a little flustered when a hummingbird faced her lips, hovering there for ten full seconds.
Of course, that put my visual art-mind to working which resulted in several small studies.
I began by searching through feathers that had splotched of red to represent the lips. The perfect feathers were from the wing of an amazon parrot feather and the tail of a male red-black cockatoo. They have a splotch of bright red and the rest of the feathers are jet black. I made two pieces. When I finished and looked at them I realized that they reminded me of white people making fun of black people by painting their faces black and making big white (and sometimes red) lips. So instead, I made this one out of an amazon parrot tail feather.