Snow Falling on Penguin

Why was there never a baby Emperor Penguin weeble?  Or was there?

Once per year posting?

I see my last post on this blog was from January and it was digital drawings.  I seem to get into the digital spirit in the winter, as it is too cold in my apartment for me to not be wearing a blanket.  Also having a computer on my lap creates extra warmth.  It is quite pathetic that people choose to live here, but I am not here to complain about the weather.  I am here to post a "painting."   And this is nothing special, but I will post it anyway.  It is a digital "copy" of a Rembrandt.  And I did say in the title to this entry that I was posting to this blog only once per year.  That is not true, as it is still 2013.  So, I guess I could say that I managed two postings in 2013.  And December is still young, right?  I could possibly post three or four or five times...

More digital paintings...and a bit of acrylics

Because it has been so cold lately, I need to have my computer on my lap as a source of heat, so I have been mostly working on digital paintings.  Well, that is my excuse and I am sticking to it.  I did one little acrylic rhino painting for a friend for her birthday that I will post here, along with a couple of digital paintings. My friend told me that she has her rhino hanging in her bathroom.  Now there are two of us with rhinos hanging in our bathrooms;)

Snowy Day in Africa?

Click to animate.

Animated Polar Bear

Yes, it is animated, but you have to click on the photo to see the animation.  It is not animated right there on the page.

5 Digital Versions of One Bear

Original

Cool Colors

Charcoal

Cartoonized

Watercolor

Van Gogh man and leaf monsters

It is very quiet in the blogosphere these days.  I like blogs better than Facebook or tumblr or twitter, but it seems that people are all about the social networking sites these days.   It may not seem like I do like blogging so much, as I haven't posted much at all, but I feel like I am posting to nobody and that defeats the purpose.  I don't know if I'm going to continue blogging, but I may just come around and post once in awhile, just as I have been doing.  So, here is a post, whether anyone is going to read it or not.   First I will post my Van Gogh man (the book is across the room now, so I can't post the actual name of the painting, as that would involve getting up or googling and I appear to be too lazy tonight to do either).  He was done with my Staedtler pens which are fine point, so this is quite different from the Sharpie version that I posted on an earlier date.  I do think that this guy (well, the guy that this guy is based on, anyway) is my favorite of Van Gogh's portraits.  

And next I am going to post my leaf monsters.  When I was out walking one morning, I was crunching through the leaves and thinking about how much I love walking through them and wondering if I could use them for some sort of art project.  I picked some up, brought them home, and inspiration struck.  I love drawing faces on things.  If you look at any of my college notebooks from my undergraduate years (and ridiculously I still have one or two), you will see that I drew eyes and faces all over the margins.  And I see faces in everything--in campfires, in peoples' clothing, on floors, on ceilings, etc...  So, I drew faces on the leaves.  I only had a limited number of leaves, as some shriveled and died before I got to them and were too fragile for me to use.  So, I was limited to three and only ended up liking one of them--the one in the middle.  

So, the one in the middle (we'll call him Goldie Leaf) had to go through a photo shoot of sorts (well more of a scanning) where he got to hang out in Van Gogh's paintings.  I did a bunch, but will only subject you to two of them for now.  

You may recognize the masked man as the source of inspiration for my Staedtler pen sketch.  

And I thought he looked like he belonged in this painting.  He visited the more famous Starry Night painting as well, but I like this one better.  But, upon thinking about it, I might as well post Starry Night with Leaf Monster too as he looks like he is flying.

Whew!  This turned out to be a long post.