Art for Ylangylang

Tonight I chose to get another one of my ATC trades done. The trader in this case was YlangYlang, aka Cananga Oderata of Deviantart. As you can see she is a very talented artist indeed.

This is her "Cacao Frog" character. First I drew the one on the right, but wasn't too happy with it, so the one on the left was rustled up n the back - making my first properly double-sided ATC in years.

And this is Jeremy Anathol, a coloufrul and flamboyant parrot with a taste for shiny things. Because I made him red, and scanners don't work well with red (or mine never have), he looks a little garish, but I think I did a good job with the pose and the movement in this piece.

Spiced up!

A bright little Vermilion Flycatcher. These wee songbirds are native to the southern States and Central and South America. The male is the colourful one. He's for Athalour in South Africa.


Last night we dined at a very yummy Indian restaurant called "Corianders". This is the herb itself. The entire plant is edible, with the leaves tasting rather different from the seeds (the flowers are not so commonly used). The leaves are supposed to aid the kidneys, I believe it was. They taste good with chicken and other spices. We had some growing in our little portable herb garden but when we went away the landlady chopped it right down to the stumps. I hope it sprouts again as it was going pretty wild! If not, I shall have to plant another one in the pot. It has a slight citrus tang.

The plant parts are actually 3d - this was supposed to be a "Botanical drawing".




And this little Loris is putting on a show just for you! By the light of the moon he's a singing, dancing star! And very, very cute. Don't you just want to gobble him up? (With coriander, of course).

Rainforest and lemurs

First and foremost - here's the completed Amazon piece:


And now... because two of my ATC friends have had a rough time of late, I've decided that nothing makes a day brighter than a cute lemur:

The first is in the style of Original Youth (and will be posted to her tomorrow) and the second is a sorta Looney Tunes style. For Tweety who has just been in hospital.


And last but not least, the bookmark for my Reading Group participants.

The tail is designed to hook over the spine of the book.

Entering the Amazon

Today's offering is merely the lineart for a piece I am working on for Miloccep. It is a 4-ATC piece featuring 5 Amazonian animals. They are the toucanet, the pygmy marmoset, a species of butterfly, a poison dart frog and a giant anteater. The plant featured is coffee.

Aside from that, I have not been doing much. A couple more quick-draw birds that haven't been scanned yet and that's about it. TOmorrow I need to colour this in and design a bookmark for my almost finished Reading Group.

I have had three letters lost in transit to me recently and am starting to get somewhat antsy about the mail system. I think it might be time to stop the art mail for a bit. I hate it when people's unique work goes AWOL on its way to me. Might be time to dust off my lemur novel and get writing!

The Eagle's Buffet Dinner

Deep in the untouched Philippines rainforest, the critically endangered Philippines eagle contemplates what will garnish her platter tonight. Will it be a tiny Maumag, the world's smallest monkey (except it's not a monkey, but the link between monkeys and prosimians, the tarsier)? OR possibly a Pilandok, the world's smallest deer? Or maybe today she shall dine upon the scaly flesh of a gliding lizard, Draco cyanopterus?

Obviously, this piece is not actually drawn to scale. As the lizard is in fact larger than the tarsier in reality. But it's bright and colourful, and the flowers are authentically from the Philippines, the island archipelago I now want to visit.

This is going to become 4 atcs in due course and be distributed out as part of the Rainforest Swap on ATCsforall, one of the best places to trade handdrawn ATCs. Currently it thus measures 5x7 inches.