I was having an "Artist's Block". I thought collage - tearing up paper and glue - would be the therapy I needed to break through. I decided to try a negative space collage. I would cover the canvas with random pieces of paper, then paint the negative space around my subject.
Tearing and pasting was very therapeutic and by the end I was feeling better and more creative. However I learned the hard way that the collage paper should have been all dark colors. As I was painting the negative space around the tree limbs, I couldn't see my subject.
The only way to fix it was to collage my subject after I painted the negative space. So as it turns out, I simply have a Red Bird collage.