Okay okay I am a lazy artist and I have this tendency of leaving my canvases outside in the courtyard/balcony thing and forgetting about them. Usually I have a good reason - to let oil paints dry outdoors and not stink up my tiny apartment - but in this case, I had started sketching on a painting, textured it with impasto, then other concerns came up (mainly getting stuff done for the art show - this was a side project so to speak) so after I'd textured it, I kind of left it outside to dry and didn't bring the canvas back in. It's no worries because it's not getting rained on or anything, but still.

Today I thought, "hmm I should probably go bring that canvas back in" and went out to do just that... as usual I examined it for spiders, because they get into EVERYTHING and I should start cataloguing all the different spider species I see in the courtyard, there are at least 5 or 6.

Instead, I found a tiny little skink huddled into the corner of the back of the canvas. AWWWWWWWWWW. I took the picture, but as my apartment is not suitable for skinks, as much as I'd like to adopt the little guy, I had to put him back out in the cold - with the canvas.

Oh, and the future painting? It's not a big one, like I said a side project - it will be of an Australian species of Gecko.

I guess I should get started on it when the skink vacates the premises - the project is now Lizard-Approved! :)

Even better than kittens:

http://olgana.livejournal.com/184449.html

Click on this link, and your quota of happiness and cuteness for the day will be instantly fulfilled. :)

The photos are, as I understand, of rescued Pandas from the region of China where the earthquake happened. Many of the babies of this protected species got frightened and ran away - and people found them, collected them, cared for them, fed them and comforted them. AWWWWW~!!!

Yoinked from kennit and adapted with shigella's strike-through idea:

"The rules on this meme seem to pre-suppose that these books are great because they have been read by many people. I think there should be a stike-through option for books you did NOT love."

100 Books

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.

( book meme under here )

Today, I found a live spider in my stir-fry vegetables.

I was making vegetable stir-fry with mushrooms, silverbeet, and almonds, and was washing a leaf of silverbeet in the sink. Now, these vegetables were packed in plastic, came from the grocery store, and sat in my fridge for SIX DAYS. The expiry date was today so I thought I'd do a quick stir-fry. Imagine my surprise when I noticed something with 8 legs had been sitting in the leaf I was about to wash, and had started to MOVE!

Usually, my husband hears the "Honey, what kind of spider is that?" question from the backyard - this time he heard it from the kitchen (in a much more scared tone of voice than the backyard version)! He thought it's a fairly harmless spider, so we tossed him outside with all the other different spiders that live out there. (You'd be amazed how many different species of everything you can find in even a small courtyard on the 2nd floor. We even have a praying mantis out there somewhere!) When it comes to spiders, I am more fascinated than frightened, though I didn't take a picture this time because I didn't know what it was, and damn it, IT WAS ALMOST IN MY FOOD! >_< Upon later investigation, we thought it might be this species, which isn't dangerous. I hope the spider will recover and be ok out there - it's a survivor!

Haha, I told my Mom about it on the phone today. She said to find a tree froggy next time. :)

Wow, long time no post. I have no excuse really - just busy as usual!
I really need to make more of an effort to post here. I have not forgotten LJ, don't you guys worry - I read through my friends page every day!

Weather's still typical Sydney winter - which means rain, rain and more drizzly rain. Sucks for taking decently lit artwork photos - so I took this one indoors, with slightly uneven lighting but oh well! Can't scan this one as it's too big, and my scanner doesn't play well with raised texture.

Yes I finished this painting! (actually a while ago, was waiting for decent light conditions so I could take a decent photo to turn into prints, but it wasn't happening, so decent photos still have to somehow be arranged)



Bast, Cat Goddess of Egypt.
Acrylics and impasto stuff on canvas, 45cm x 60cm.

Painting #4 for the upcoming group art show I'm part of! (still 3 more animal deities to do - Horus the Falcon, Hathor the Cow, and Thoth the Ibis.)

She was based vaguely around the body type and pattern of an Oriental cat, with lots of gold tones applied liberally. I think the face looks more like my cat back home, though, not very Oriental. Oh well. She is every-cat, or something!!

She will eventually be for sale, at the art show. I think. I always have to go through a couple weeks' time before I can bear to part with a finished painting. :P I need to learn to let go, otherwise I'll be one of those old ladies surrounded by lots of cats...on canvas!

( 1 more closeup image )

Ever have one of those projects... you start it, you're oh-so-excited, this-is-going-to-be-so-awesome, and then run into a complete creative hurdle? And then you set it aside and work on it in tiny increments, but most of the time it's sitting there staring at you, going "when are you going to finish me?" And it stares, and stares, and stares some more.

Well, I think this one is finally done...


Sekhmet, Ancient Lioness
45x60cm, acrylics on canvas

Thousands of years, harsh desert winds, and changing faiths could chip at the stone of the statue of the Egyptian Goddess Sekhmet, but they could never break her spirit.

I've been working on this painting in bits and pieces for months hoping to get it right. I love painting animals, so I am proud to say I captured what I wanted with the Lioness quickly, but for weeks I couldn't get the statue's stone part to look like broken stone..

I think I am happy with it now :)

Guess what I went to see today!
Well, me and a few thousand other people, hehe. Of course, as a proud Haligonian, I had to see the first and last meeting of the two beautiful ships "Queen Victoria" and "Queen Elizabeth 2" - they are both Cunard ocean liners, and Samuel Cunard, as you may or may not know, was from Halifax, Canada! The "Queen Elizabeth 2" is also my favourite ship...

I loved reading and re-reading tales of ocean liners, the race across the Atlantic Ocean for the Blue Ribband award, and of course the tragedies of the sea, in "On the Trail of Sea Catastrophes" by Lev Skryagin. My dad and I have both read that book cover to cover dozens of times - Skryagin's writing style is alive and the stories he chose were of victories on the sea as well as tragedies. I fell in love with the romantic and sometimes tragic image of the great ocean liner, built to withstand all the force that the brutal Atlantic Ocean could throw at it. Of course, living in Halifax, by that very same Atlantic Ocean for half my life, made me truly appreciate it, and made the stories come to life - after all, Nova Scotia had a lot to do with that very same history.

Anyway, I will truly miss the "Queen Elizabeth 2" and will likely never see her again - you see, at the end of this year, she is being decommissioned and becoming a floating hotel somewhere in Dubai. Nevermind my disgust at this (if she is going to become a tourist attraction, then she should be in Halifax!) - her last visit to Sydney is something I was not going to miss! She, in my opinion, is the last of the great ocean liners - she has the build, elegant yet sturdy to weather any storm, she has a beautiful design and lines that remind me of the vessels in Skryagin's books. Most of all, she has the grandeur of a true queen of the oceans. I don't get that same feeling from "Queen Victoria" or "Queen Mary 2" - their design is very modern, but it doesn't recall the elegance of the days of the ocean liners as easily as the beautiful "QE2".

Greg and I saw the ship's visit last year around this time, too - and because last year, we were at the Opera House to watch her arrival, we decided to follow directions and go to Mrs Macquarie's Chair at the Botanic Gardens, to get a different vantage point. This was a great idea, and allowed me to take LOTS of pictures of both ships, and this meeting! (The QE2 went on to turn the same way toward Circular Quay as last year, which makes me happy - as I have pictures from that point, which complete this set nicely.)

Seeing as I took lots of pictures - I'll finish the rest of the editing/uploading tomorrow! Look for the first half of this event, in my Flickr (yes it's taking up 2 pages already): http://www.flickr.com/photos/oceloteyes/

http://nymag.com/arts/books/reviews/43884/

I'd never heard of this magazine before they contacted me last week via Flickr, offering to purchase the use of one of my photographs to illustrate a book review! I thought, how AWESOME is that? :)
(Cheque should be in the mail, or something, hopefully.)

Anyway the same magazine has been making news headlines lately in Australia, for its most recent cover and photoshoot of Lindsay Lohan nude. LOL. (I think this is the issue after the one my photo is in, though.)

But the main thing is, my photo's published, they're paying me, they gave me credit and spelled my name right, and hey, my art could use all the publicity it can get! :P

And Nova Scotia's Cape Breton Island isn't on that map!!

What a pretty roo!
She inspired me so much with her adorable expressions, that I just had to draw her.

I love kangaroos, especially their faces and antics. One book I once read, said that Australian animals, especially kangaroos and other marsupials, are "lower" in evolution of mammals, so their expressions are more plain, bland, less developed than animals that are "further evolved" or more "advanced" in evolution. Whoever wrote that, has obviously not spent very much time in Australia!!!
I find Aussie animals to be absolutely fascinating, and certainly very expressive. How could one not love roos? They're Australia's most famous animal for a reason - they just rock! :)

Copy, Paste, Answer. I'll answer for you if you post one of these too. :)

( survey/meme under cut )

Tawny Frogmouth - rly, not an owl! :)
(They look similar - but Frogmouths are actually more closely related to the Nightjars, than to Owls. They mostly eat insects, and are named Frogmouths for the way they gape open their huge mouths to catch bugs! This one, however, is more interested in masquerading as a branch, and looking indignant, making sure no one thinks he's an owl! hehe.)

I'm not quite as delighted with this one as I was with the Echidna, and it already breaks my black-border comic-book-esque thing that I had happening (darn it all!), but I think it's done now!
For a background, I thought it was a little empty so I tried to fill it with grass first, then remembered that this is definitely not a field owl, and replaced it with the lone Eucalyptus branch. :)

While the Echidna was 99.9% ink on paper, the Frogmouth himself is all real ink - but I couldn't help myself and jumped into Photoshop to do the wood/branch he's sitting on, and the Eucalyptus. :) Inking in Photoshop is almost as fun as tangible pen inking - and truth be told, the wood looks way better inked digitally, than it did inked on paper! I think I got the bird-blending-into-wood feeling, despite the different media. Tawny Frogmouths LOVE to pretend they're branches!
I love using tangible ink when it comes to animals, though - it would drive me insane to do all those feathers with my Wacom pen and tablet, but I can lovingly sketch an animal in ink on paper for hours.

When Greg and I were spending our short but very sweet honeymoon in the Springbrook Rainforest, we stayed in a lovely cabin in the middle of the woods, and went bushwalking in the forest together, taking on a different hiking trail each day. On one of these trails, we were retracing our steps on the way back up the side of the Springbrook mountain, returning from a photogenic look-off spot from where I wanted to take some photos, when Greg stopped right in his tracks and whispered back to me, "Echidna!"

I nearly bumped into his back, being a little slow on the uptake, muttering "What, you serious?" (I can actually be pretty dumb sometimes - you know, nevermind that I was in a wild corner of Australia and all, and echidnas do live here - I think I was trying to watch a bird at that moment!)

"Echidna... look." He cautiously pointed straight ahead of us, where, right in the middle of the path, a real live wild echidna had just lumbered out from the underbrush and was making its way directly down the path, towards us! It was an absolutely magical encounter (during which I screwed up each and every photo I tried to take of it). The echidna, this completely wild and truly Australian creature, had ambled on right down the path toward us - we were quiet as the trees, except for my mad clicking of the camera button. He paused, only two feet away - and something must have finally dawned on him, or else he finally noticed us through his beady little eyes. He looked up right at us, then slowly turned, backed off, and bulldozed his way through the underbrush on the other side of the path and out of our sight. (This is where I remebered that I do in fact have a video option on my camera, and used it to film him turning and leaving.) "Bulldozed" really is the best way to describe the motion - the echidna nonchalantly carved a tunnel for himself through the branches in the underbrush, behind some trees, and soon even the rustle of branches crackling behind him faded. As wild as it gets!

For some strange reason tonight, I felt like drawing that echidna, and especially that momentarily curious look on his face when he finally noticed us:



I'm thinking this will be the next print I list on Etsy! ;)

A spiderweb glistens in the sun, strangely mirroring the structure of the amusement park ferris-wheel in the distance - or perhaps, the ferris-wheel is mirroring the structure of the web? After all, spider-webs did come first.

This was a fascinating moment I simply could not pass by. The spider-web seemed to complement the wheel so well, it seems like they almost continue one another's structure in the circle.

(oh, and I love the way the dead bugs caught in the web make it look like it's old film artifacts! :) It's my digital camera, no film. If only I had a medium-format square camera...)

I have a few more of these shots, but not sure if the close square crop adds something, or takes it away by kind of "caging the picture in"... opinions please? :)

(testing this Flickr blogging thing for the first time)

I'M STUNNED!!!
I missed seeing this front page on Etsy - but here I was wondering why the views on my Rainforest photograph had suddenly got about 100 extra, as it's one of the new photos added to my Etsy shop, that didn't have many views..

And then I checked that treasury and the comments to it and found out that it had actually been on the Etsy front page! :O What a GORGEOUS treasury with amazing photographers - seriously an honour to be featured.

I don't have a screenie of it being on the Front Page, but here is the treasury screenshot page on its own :)

No Etsy sales yet from it though - but I did get views and a few hearts! :)

http://oceloteyes.etsy.com/ - my art and photography shop!

How eyes evolve, or rather, how Nadya realises that she's WAY OUT OF PRACTICE DRAWING HUMANS and runs to Linda Bergkvist's eye-painting tutorial for help! (Recommended to all artists everywhere, digital or not. Hope the link works.)



I'm working on this in Photoshop on and off, in the evenings mainly, when the sun isn't out. I don't want to finish tangible paintings when they were done in sunlight, and intended to be seen in sunlight, by artificial light (which isn't as powerful as my eyes would like, or the colour temperature that I want. I'm picky like that.)
Still haven't a clue what she'll be wearing... might use the original reference model's (Marissa, in Brian's photo) clothing and build on that. :/

Next step: The other eye. And then, the NOSE tutorial. Back to basics...! :(

Oh, and Ballistic Publishing, the company that publishes amazing digital art books, has an awesome sale right now. I just ordered Linda Bergkvist's poster book.

It's been raining a lot as of late, but the sun came out for at least a little while today, allowing me to do a bit more work on the Elephant painting from earlier! The baby elephant has an adorable face now:



(Excuse the colours and shadow, it's evening so the colours are a bit off according to the camera.)
The rest of the body is only loosely blocked in, but I will be refining all the shapes and painting the rest as I go. :) The brown around the face will also turn into background and grass, and not look like random mud at all. There is a method to my madness...

I am fairly close to finishing it now - just need to paint the rest of the baby elephant, then do the grass around both the elephants, and finish the landscape. I am considering hinting at the rest of their elephant herd in the distance - as it is unusual for elephants, especially a parent and baby elephant, to be seen alone!
The way I figure - it's early morning in Africa, and the baby elephant has wandered off a little from the herd, chasing after butterflies - and its mother followed it, protectively watching over the little one. :)

(You can see more of the development of this painting in my earlier entries. It's a gift for my parents.)

alright people, I gave in, following the encouragement:

I *gulp* went back over to CGTalk for this, and made a WIP thread for "The Skull Collector" updates - if the people there don't hate me for not having been back for ages, hopefully they'll offer some tips. I'm so out of practice, it's scary. (You don't want to see the first two frustrating attempts at colouring this, trust me.)

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=31&t=584322

I would like to submit this thing to the CG Art book, buuut... lacking a unique idea, if/when I finish this, I might as well use it as a random portfolio piece. I think the judges for the art books have probably seen sooooo many girls with horns, that they won't want to look.

It can be my pet project for evening times, because I do most of my tangible painting during the day with natural sunlight, then during the evening I hop on WoW because of nothing to do :P
Now watch me not finish this for months!