Happy Mother's Day - with Vultures!

It used to paint/draw/etc a lot of pictures for my mum, until the year she said "please do not give me any more pictures in frames, as I'm running out of room to store them". So instead I gave her a 6x6 scrapbook album with one picture in it, and for every occasion (Christmas, Birthday, Mother's Day) I draw another page for it. So far I have given her: chickens, a villa in Italy, fantails and a kakapo. As you can see, we both love birds. The picture represents what she is interested in at the time or something relevant to our lives. Thus when I was in Hawaii, I rustled up her Mother's Day piece.

And here it is:


These wee guys are Apapane, one of the more common and easily recognisable of the Hawaii Honeycreepers - a strange little family of Passerines that evolved on the islands to much the same purpose as Darwin's Finches. The curly ferns, although stylised, are modelled on some that were in the lovely rainforest view outside our little cabin on the island of Hawaii. I stylised it somewhat, using the technique of several local artists. These use prismacolour pencils, which I acquired whilst I was over there.

Now onto the vultures. These are for the Spring Choose-a-theme where we each join a group with a set "umbrella theme" - in this case "animals" and we all select something within that theme that we wish to base our four cards on. So here are my offerings, I hope you like them.

They are a Turkey Vulture, a King Vulture, a Lammergeier and an Egyptian Vulture.
I'm not sure if I'm 100% happy with them all. The colouring of white birds is hard!

Dragonflies and Cuckooclocks

Two cards to show off today.

The first is for AvaElizabeth, who lists amongst her themes dragonflies, hearts, lilies, rainbows, skulls and a number of other things. I could not quite incorporate everything here - but I did manage to find a lily that was heart shaped and a dragonfly with rainbow coloured wings.

I hope she likes it.






And the second is something a little bit different. But not really!

It is for Miss who lists realistic animals and clock faces amongst a number of other very interesting topics. After utterly failing to draw Snoopy, I decided instead to take on the cuckoo clock. I adore cuckoo clocks, and actually collect them myself (Crazy Cuckoo Clock Cards, anyhow). This time I decided to go with the more realistic side of things. The cuckoo is a Common Cuckoo and it was actually drawn on a separate sheet of card, mounted on thicker board and then stuck atop the original drawing of the clock.

Rabbit Moon Take Two

Okay, so not a lot has been achieved the last two days. Today is my long haul at work - 9.30 - 9.15 and thus I don't have enough time to fully devote to my art. So all I have to show off is yesterday's results - a reworking of the "Rabbit Moon" card. I was never quite happy with it - the animal symbols were added on belatedly and the rabbit itself was not quite proportioned right. So I thought I'd give it another go. Here are the two side by side:

Which one do you like best?

Cards to be worked on:
Eraserqueen (1) - in her style (just for fun)
Donnaquinn (3) - bushbird, fairy, mammal or reptile
DonnaCr (1) - Cat from China DONE
SandraWillard (1) - My Dream home DONE

May PAT (due July 24th)
Lynnelise -Purple
RoOskie- Ostriches-The funnier the better!!!
Neca84 -CATS (the musical? I guess)
Miss -Hot air Ballons
Carole Cadek - Tropical Flowers

Dragonfly Inchies (due July 1st)
- 9 dragonflies

Nature Goddess and Mutant Hatchling

Only two card to show off today - although I did make another, I doubt it shall scan well.

Today's card is "Nature Goddess". This was designed for Amerasu as a "hostess gift" for the Spring PAT. I wanted to base it off her, but she's camera shy and had not uploaded a clear photo, so I chose instead to base it - very loosely - off a picture of her eldest daughter. I am assuming like mother, like daughter, right? The flowers are passionvine flowers.


The other card was a hatching egg. It was part of a PIF (Play it Forward) started by Spiritfingers - she of the cards-with-moving-parts. The concept was that we would send an egg that opens up to reveal a infant. We had to offer it with a hint at what was inside the egg.

Mine was:
"Who would like a cute little mutant from me?"

And here he is:

He's off to a new home with Vicki Z. Hope she treats him well and he behaves himself!

Soon to come - cards for one-on-one trades with Miss and AvaElizabeth.

Safari and Butterfly Plaques

A friend of mine is having a baby soon, and as she already has a toddler, I thought it would be fun to give them something to put on their wall. Now, I had these coasters lying around that I had acquired years ago and never got around to using (and was thus a little guilty about). But the problem was, that I would have to paint them. And I can't paint. Can't paint, you say? Surely she jests! No, sadly, it is true. Not with acrylics anyway. I achieve a paint-like effect at times, but it is always with pencils and markers, rarely paintbrushes. And the times I do use proper watercolour paints I've generally gone through later and added in detail with pencils. However, I pulled them out and discovered that lo and behold - ordinary pencils will work on them, to a point (the derwent were the best) as do tombow markers (although they prefer a layer of pencil under them). So, I coloured them in and sketched up some safari animals, which I then glued on. But something seemed a little wrong - there was dead space in some of the pieces. I can't abide empty corners, as you've likely noticed, and thus was forced to add... flowers! The lion was the only one to avoid this treatment because with his centering there was no "Dead corner". However, I did add a few swirls to the background, just for fun.

Anyhow, here's the piece:

Animals are Giraffe (with acacia), Lion (with swirls), Elephant (with err, pretty flowers, maybe some sort of daisy?) and Zebra with Tulip tree.

I also made this piece - it was actually my first experiemental piece. It's slightly 3d.

Birdhouses and a Bunny

Today I completed a mere two cards, despite it being my last day off work. Oh well, I also acheived some house keeping and got another of my "gifts" mostly done. I have been watching the episodes of "Lost" and "True Blood" I missed while I was away.

Firstly, the Rabbit Moon. This card is for the theme "The Moon" and is based on a Chinese legend. I'm not 100% happy with it yet, so may add a few more details before I send it away.

A monkey, otter, jackel and rabbit choose to offer charity on the Upposatha hoping that a demonstration of virtue will offer them great reward. They come upon an old man, begging for food. The otther gives him fish, the monkey fruit and the jackel pilfers milk curd and a lizard. However, the rabbit knows only how to gather grass and instead throws himself upon the old man's fire. He is not burnt to a crisp, however, but instead survives. For it turns out the old man is Sakra, and touched by the rabbit's virtue, draws an image of the rabbit on the moon for all to see.



And now onto the fun ones. The last two themes for me to complete, were "whimsical houses" and "Haunted houses". But I decided to do something a little bit different... Inspired by various websites selling certain merchandise, I designed these two cards:

Enjoy! I have one more card to work on for this PAT, with the theme "Nature Goddess" for our lovely hostess, Amerasu. And I had the quirky idea of basing the goddess on Amerasu herself. But I can't seem to find any photos or self-portraits. So if anyone knows or has any, can they let me know please?

Gidday Mate!

I have decided that this is going to become my Art Journal and show off the art I achieve every day or so. As many of you know, I am addicted to Trading Cards. I make a lot - indeed, I've recently just made card #2000 in just over 3 years (I think, I've kinda lost count). I draw animals, monsters, people, cakes, cottages, anything I'm challenged to draw, more or less (and I'm about to start on tropical flowers). So lets see what I ahve to show off today!

At present I am working on a number of swaps over at the awesome sites ATCs for All (www.atcsforall.com) and the juried site (yet they let me in) Illustrated ATCs (www.illustratedatcs.com).

At Illustrated ATCs I am engaged in a Secret Santa Swap for Summer (although it's winter for ame). In this I have to make two small ornaments for two people and a larger gift box with a few more goodies for another person.

I've made the two smaller ones and I really want to show them off, but I've been told I'm not allowed to yet, cos teh Deadline ain't until the 30th June and I don't want to spoil the surprise!

So sorry about that.

On the other paw, I am also in a Pick a Theme swap. Now, Picka themes are when you sign up and join a group with 4 other members, and each member selects a theme that they want to collect cards of. The other people in that group make them cards based around this theme. It's a great idea and can really get you out of your comfort zone.

Yesterday I finished off a trio of cards for this swap, and I'm allowed to show them off.


Firstly, we have "Miss Medusa" for the theme "Medusas". She is based on a photo of a lovely looking lady I found via a google search for "woman dreadlocks". Whilst her expression and pose is similar to the reference, the actual woman looked nothing like this!

Oh my gods - she's looking straight at you! Better get that mirror up right away.

We also have "Ear Candy". The theme for this was "Anatomical Endearments" which as you may have guessed, means close-ups of pretty body parts. I wanted to do something a little quirky-weird, and thus looked up idioms using the word "Ear". "Ear Candy" was the best I could illustrate.







This is a portrait of a Gothic Unicorn. Now, the lass I was drawing this for had put up her themes as "Gothic Portraits OR Unicorns" and I learned later that she had put the "unicorns" there specifically for me - because she thought I preferred drawing animals to people. Which is generally true. HOWEVER, what she didn't realise is that I find standard unicorns pretty boring so I was initially going to do a gothic portrait. But as goth is far too trendy-popular now with teenage girls (I blame that vampire nonsense) and Victoria Francis is the In Thing in poster art, I couldn't quite bring myself to draw that either. So... I took all her themes. If you google "Gothic Unicorn" you will see that there is a very fine sculpture realised by Windstone by that name. It is absolutely gorgeous and was my inspiration for this piece, along with a choker I found in a goth clothing site.

Anyhow, I hope you have enjoyed yesterdays post-humous. If you stay tuned you will see todays examples - a "Rainbow Phoenix" and the "Rabbit in the Moon".

Also to come later - a whimsical house and a haunted house, plus a set of vultures and whimsical instruments. Plus some Hawaiian themed art.

I hope you have enjoyed my art.