Happy Halloween!

Yep, these are my geckos if I could dress them up for Halloween!

Cowgirl Model

Another outfit from the sketch group. She's kneeling on a old school round cushion piece (y'know the kind that look like a jelly mold?). That's why her knees sort of drop out. It was a 10 min pose, so I was sketching and painting fast. I was in a spot on the side of the group and didn't get that many great poses, but this one was perfect!

Material Girl

I had my "Dr. Sketchy" figure drawing group last Saturday and the theme was the 80's so our model came out in some vintage outfits, and the DJ played classic 80's rock and metal... and I'm a little embarrassed over how much I enjoyed drawing to it! If I get in a rut, I may have to turn to that digital music channel and get my "Paradise City" fix :)

This piece I obviously finished at home on the computer, but the sketch was made at the session, along with the pen doodles (I got a little art set at work, and everyone was like "Ah, those take me back!).

Trying out new "old" looks

Finding some inspiration in Mucha and other Art Nouveau artists. It's a stylistic way to represent things, and I like the panels, patterns, and textures. This is a piece about walking Enzo and scaring off cats, squirrels and birds. We'll see where and when I use this style, but it's fun for me, and I need some fun!

Website under Construction

I've had the reality check that I have a new book coming out, so I need to go great guns on my website! I'm changing several elements of it, but this will be the new homepage. It's a lot of work, and Mike will be a big help. Can't wait to email everyone when it's ready!

How many lizards do you see?

If you answered one, look harder! Funny, even though Thumbkin is bright green, red and gold he's just as hard to spot in the tank as the leaf tail gecko.

And guess who's 2 years old!

Enzo had his 2nd birthday on Monday, and here he is being ever so cute all curled up in a ball, shown on top, and crashed out with his new birthday toys below. I'd have liked to thrown a little party, but it came at the end of a stressful week, so we'll have to have a celebration soon. We did take him downtown to the Lofty Dog, where he met Pickles the Pug and picked out he raccoon tug toy. I can't believe 2 years have flown by! He's making life too fun :)

The Reptile Expo

Well, the Austin Reptile and Amphibian Show was last weekend and here you see my table set up with all the artwork I offered. There were canvases, framed watercolors and drawings, and two portfolios of prints and unframed artwork. Long story short, I made a small profit after taking into account the table fee and other small expenses, but I think my display served better as advertising for what I could do with commission work. I had some business cards and brochures run off at Kinkos that advertised various commission possibilities, a popular one being "Tattoo Design." And people were showing their ink at the show! I saw some really intricate and unique tattoos, that while I wouldn't want to be covered in them, I could have a blast designing them for other people. So, hopefully there's revenue still to be tallied with commissions, but even if not, I did have a lot of fun. I got to go to a cookout and see Tim's venomous snake shack (a whole room of pissed off rattlesnakes will get your blood pumping). And I met lots of neat people, who, I'm sorry dear readers, they "get the whole reptile thing." And it was a boost in the moral to hear nice things about my drawings and paintings. And my favorite sales pitch for my work was "Hey, they look great and you don't have to feed 'em!" :)

Scott Allen from One Stop Exotics had the table next to me, and we got to know each other a little. He was selling beautiful Jackson chameleons and gold dust day geckos. He had some left over and he gave me a male, because we'd guessed that Klondike was a female and he thought we'd have fun with 2 of them. Good plan, but turns out Klondike is a dude after all, and after a very entertaining tail and tongue display (ask Mike next time you see him to demonstrate), we had to pull the new gecko out and add him to Waldo's terrarium. So now we have "Where's Waldo and Where is Thumbkin" in the 28 gallon. So far it's working out in an odd couple day shift/night shift kinda way (finger's crossed).

Reptile Show Artwork In Progress

(click on to enlarge) This is one of the new paintings I did for the upcoming Reptile Show. I hope I find a buyer who'll love it as much as I do. This is actually a juvenile green tree python (the young ones are yellow or red, in this case). I should paint more snakes, it's relaxing for me. It's all repeating patterns and light hitting smooth surface... very zen like painting. I guess if I were drawing this from real life it would be less zen and more duck and weave!

Waldo Closeup

Thought Waldo needed a closeup photo to show off how cool he looks. That green mossy part isn't moss, it's his skin, and it's all fringy and bumpy. And he doesn't hide, he seems to pick the most open part of the bark or branch, and just his skin and his stillness make him disappear, ninja style... almost like he knows the predators wouldn't think to look just in plain sight. At night he switches on and moves around with lizardly grace, but it's how he doesn't move that's impressive. He even stretches his back legs all helter skelter to mimic twigs... ok, so I may do that in my sleep, too, but I didn't know we had that in common!

Austin Reptile and Amphibian Expo!

You know you're way into herps when there's a show and you're not going as an attendee, but a vendor! I was struck with inspiration when I realized Austin was hosting a reptile show and, hey, I have quite a few unsold paintings that could fetch a good price by attendees looking to blow some money on some herpetological stuff. So, I looked into it, and having a table there to sell paintings was very affordable (I sell 1 painting and I've covered it). Plus, it'll be fun for me and Mike. We drove down to a show in San Antonio and came back with Dexter our Hognose snake. This time we want to come home with some cold cash! The image above is my banner that will go up on the site for the show.

Now... who can I get to man the desk with me so I can have potty breaks... c'mon, Jilly! The snakes are all enclosed, and think of the good your raised heart rate will do :) Zach? It's muy macho, you'll feel invigorated afterwards. Rhi? You've got anti-anxiety pills still, right? Pop a few and meet me there!

Housing Market Up Turn in Deutsch-land!

So, many know we've had a beautiful vivarium for about 9 months with no occupant save 30 or so plant species. It was like a house on the market, but we couldn't find the right tenant. I'd wanted poison dart frogs (and still do someday), but the upkeep for those would be too much for me right now. We were also faced with the fact that if we're paying for the juice the lights and water feature are using, we should get a little more bang for our buck and have something moving around in there. So after some research and talking to some herpetologist people we discovered the mossy leaf tail gecko who didn't need anything done to the tank, we just dropped him in! They are a cooler temperature lizard that required just the sort of heavily planted vivarium I had built. And, frankly, he's so funny looking we just had to have him. He's all mossy and lichen looking, a really good camouflage artist, so we named him "Waldo" as in "Where's Waldo? I've been staring at this tank for- Oh! There he is!"

I've Joined a Gym!

Ok, so with the post about the freaking heat, the hubby and I have sent up the white flag and joined a gym. But in the spirit of our electronics buying, it is the BMW of gyms! It's open 24 hours, so surely, even with my insane hours I can make it in there. They sent us a promotional offer that waived a lot of the joining fees, so we're signed up on their uber platinum level, which was all they were sigining people up for. But this way, we get almost all of the otherwise add on things included in our fee (things like classes and fitness tests). Our friends were gold members that got rolled or grandfathered into the platinum, and we've had fun telling them all the free stuff they get now that they were unaware of.

What I didn't expect when we started working out is to have such a noticeable change in my state of mind. I mean, it's like someone put me on Zanex, or something! I guess it's endorphins or released pent up stress. It's scary to think that I could feel this much better without really realizing that I felt so bad before. I also, wrongly, thought you only suffered from stress if you were unhappy about said stress (like you're only a workoholic if you don't enjoy it). This year's been stressful, the good kind of stress, as in I have books under production and coming out soon and the company is making great headway, but there's quite a lot of putting out fires as they pop up.

So while I have physical goals I want to achieve, it's already worth it on a deeper psychological level: work out = no creative burn out!

Images from my Rain Forest Show

Sorry I didn't use the "good" camera, but these are some of the paintings I did for my show in April. I picked bold/colorful wildlife and painted on what I consider large scale for me. I sold several in the show, and got many inquiries on the frog, but he's sitting above my desk here now, and I think that's where he belongs. The viper, too, I couldn't part with in the end, and it's actually covering the hole of our fireplace, with the screen place in front of it. It's a neat effect, because the black of the canvas looks like the depth of the fireplace, sort of freaky.

Its. So. Freakin. HOT!!!

Here's a quote from the News here in Austin:

In a typical year, we hit 100-degrees eleven times in Austin. Its only mid-June and we have surpassed that number... the high of 101 at Mabry today makes it the 13th for the year. And that now puts us in 2nd place for the all time for number of 100+ days during the months of May and June.

I've finally become the delicate Southern Belle my Mom secretly always hoped I would be (just kidding, Mom), but honestly, I step outside and my Scarlett O'Hara comes out, "Oh, my, I seem to have succumbed to the vapors, clutch the pearls!" I'm pretty sure I got a mild case of heat exhaustion over the weekend: I had no appetite and felt what Mike and I call "loagey" and blech. I resent this, as I'm no shrinking violet, but I dare anyone to put up with this heat and be at the top of their productivity game.

And I'm pretty sure the heat has zapped my brain, too. I start the day with a pretty well rested brain, thinking of all the things I could do at work and at home. Step outside in the sticky 105 degree heat and ten seconds later I'm drooling in the coolest part of the house wondering why Texas won't legalize your birthday suit as suitable work attire.

Tonight it's driven me to Tequila. I thought, Hey, maybe there's something to the equatorial favorism of margarita as an elixir, and by jove, I think they're on to something there. A big fish bowl margarita later, I'm more worried about the numbness in my face than the sweat rings in my shirt. And it's like getting dehydrated on MY TERMS, none of this atmosphere ripping out my precious bodily fluids, that's what the salt on the rim of my glass if for, thankyouverymuch.

It's time like this I'm glad I'm not a little black Italian Greyhound. Poor Enzo is like a cell phone with half a bar left. He shoots out of the house all happy, then the warning tone goes off alerting that he has about 5 seconds of juice left. It's like watching the evolution of man in reverse, turning the vibrant, bouncy dog into a lowly primordial bottom feeder. Sigh...

So, more creativity to come when the brain can withstand the heat :) Check the Weather Channel.

Feeling Patriotic

Well, this color pencil drawing started, actually, with me finding a really nice paper at my favorite art store in town (Jerry's Artarama). It's Strathmore's heavy weight dry media paper, and it felt so much like a lithographic stone I used to do prints with, that I bought then decided to do some portraits with it. And with it hot as blazes here, I thought I'd do something to commemorate the fourth of July. I also really got into the John Adams HBO series, especially the opening sequence that showed the early revolutionary war flags, like the snake one shown in the corner.

The scan was, I'm sorry, sort of half assed, so some on the edges got cut off. The bottom shows a little more of the "Join, or Die" motto, and the e in people above isn't cut off. But this was a big drawing (18x24") so I'm only going to do so much scanning and puzzling together the pieces.

I think I'll find a buyer in town for this one. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. The only traced/transfered part is the "We the People," everything else, the faces and all were free hand. The overall design of the piece was thrown together pretty fast, too, from several references. I did enjoy reading about the snake flag. Ben Franklin actually carved out the woodcut design himself, and it ties in with his recommendation that if Britain kept sending them convicts, that America should send England their rattlesnakes. Some say that the rattlesnake came darn close to being our national mascot (the whole Don't Tread on Me came from this flag, too).

Greening up the flower beds

Well, we're trying to beautify our flower beds, so we added some sage, oleander, laurell, red yucca, and some baby aloe plants that Jill sent me home with (she has a very productive aloe at her place). Hopefully we picked the right ones!

A New Dedicated Pets Blog

I've started a new dedicated Pets blog called Pet-a-Palooza that I hope ya'll will want to check out. I just have too much I want to post here about my pets, so I'm diversifying. I'm also going to invite friends and family to be contributor, so we can all brag on our pets. I'll try to have reoccurring features like "Pic of the Week" and "Doodle of the Month" so bookmark it and drop in now and then (I'll try to make it interesting!). If you go there now, you can get a rarely seen roll call with all the pet's names, species and countries of origin.

Hope to see ya there!

Lemur Silkscreen Doodle

A digital doodle, if you will. I did the pen drawing last Friday at the zoo, then played with dropping in flat colors like a silkscreen... much cleaner this way :)

close up of Gordon

I like this one because the male cordon blue is looking at me (we've named him Gordon for Gordon Ramsay with the whole Cordon Blue culinary school). This also shows the nice lushness I made with some silk and some real plants. Some I'll take out once they feel safe in their environment so they'll have some more flight room. I love the internet, I found a lot of useful info there (www.finchinfo.com).