life amongst the hippies

something I made for the woot derby.

Victor's Beaver

Yep, FIRST, before the giant hulking Abby Normal, he tried it on a few smaller fellas.

I wonder if he could dance to Puttin' on the Ritz?

Fat Crow on a tiny branch

Poor guy been munching a leetle too much corn.

Were-Deer, or Deer-Wolf.

Not sure which this is, but I like him, and the tree-stump. moon needs some detail.I think he needs to be a little more vertical, and with a little more clearance over the tree. tree is pretty great, too.

Hero. for the Goodjoe offline YMCA shirt contest.

I drew this a few days ago, and tweaked it yesterday for submission to the GoodJoe offline YMCA Northeast T-shirt contest.

Foxes at Fire, Fire with Foxes, not quite sure

I started this project about a year ago, and shelved it until a few days ago. I'd been involved in a derby in which a fox was drawn with these long stripey lines, allegedly pointillism. Anyway, regardless, it got me thinin about drawing a fox where it was only drawn via the fur. Eventually I put in reflections on the eyes and light on the noses, so it wasn't just the fur. I always wanted them to be in front of a fire, and so that was the focus of my past day or so.
I'm not satisfied yet, what I want this to look like is that the foxes are curled up together behind the fire, and they are visible from the light on their fur and reflected from their eyes. Consequently, the brightest light is going to be at the closest portions of the foxes,a nd the farther back parts will be in shadow and darker. This is also true that the farther back portion will be darker. So I have to fiddle with it some more before I'm happy. I am pleased by the fire itself, and by the foes, just need some tweaking of the brightness of the foxes.

Portrait of Horatio van Gogh up for voting at DesignbyHumans, PLUS a new drawing of a bunny rider.

My portrait of Horatio van Gogh is up for voting on DesignbyHumans. <<< link

However they do, I'm pleased that I managed to complete the two designs enough to submit them. :^)

more to come.

oh, and a bit of fun:

This bunny rider inexplicably has forgotten his reins- I'll have to fix that.

DBH Submission: long after the apocalypse

My giant beetles design is now up for voting on DesignbyHumans!

If you like it, please give it a vote, comments are good too!
Today I intend to complete submitting my Horatio van Gogh design, also to DBH.

Tiger, tiger

Well, the real world has intruded in a big way on my computer time, reflected by my lack of updates over the last week or so. We are in the middle of the worst winter OF ALL TIME! OF ALL TIME!*
* in the Mid-Atlantic region, since they've started recording it.

At our house, last weekend we got 30 inches of snow. By Tuesday, we finally had it shoveled out of our driveway. Our neighbors, who had someone come with a truck to clear their driveway, got their drives cleared by Tuesday morning, a couple of hours before us.

About an hour after the last of the shoveling was done here, the snow started for our current storm. At that time, it was predicted for 10-20 inches, now they are saying 6-12 inches. However, the big thing is the WIND. It's a Nor'easter, with 40 mph winds and gusts above that. we're seeing wind right now, but it's gonna get worse. this morning it looked like about 5 inches of new snow, but really, the drifting and tree breakage is the big concern, and we are likely to lose power, along with everyone else.

Our kids have been out of school since Friday, and at least through the end of this week. Consequently, they have been using my computer more than I have.

However, I did enter a couple of origami designs in the Woot derby, and it was the second of those that inspired the one that I'm showing here.

 

I ended up folding this origami, and shining a light own on it so that I could see where the shadow would be. I'm sure it isn't really quite right, as the flames would probably be more blurred, but I like the look of it, and I really like the idea of catching the tiger on fire.

I didn't burn the origami.

I should say that I did change it some from the original, which was a cat, not a tiger. In that origami, the ears are pointy, and I cut off the corners. I figured that was OK, since the original ears were cut anyway. I also put a bend in the tail, and folded back the front of the feet so that they'd look like paws instead of some kind of chibi®* things. Over-all, I think the changes I made greatly improve the origami. The origami is also a two-piece design, which technically is against the rules, but common, so I don't care.

*Trademark belongs to Adder. ;^)

Eastern Eyed Clickbeetles.

I took several photographs of these beetles last summer, and have made the beetles into a couple of eight color vectors.  I think they'll make an awesome T-shirt, and am going to submit it (to probably DBH) this week. I hope they will put it up to vote on, since it's based off a photo that I took, there isn't any copyright issue with the photo.



The only thing I'm concerned about is whether they can wrap it around like I've showed it.

Anyway, this bug showed up around some logs I was splitting, and barely moved while I was taking pictures of it, so I took several different views. These two seemed the most lifelike when placed on a shirt.

Heart Derby.

ugh. that's really all I have to say.

oh, nice job though, Boots! a little ray of light in the horror of this derby.

Puzzled T-Rex, continued

Well, I've been working on this guy, and he is way cooler now, I think.  click it to see a much bigger version, which is still reduced from the original drawing.

I am kind of stymied now. I know darned well I can't make him into a Tshirt that looks a lot like this, so I need to figure out the best way to proceed. Maybe I could halftone it, but I kind of hate to do that. Suggestions?

Oh, and I think the T-Rex'd look pretty neat with a jungle-ish background, lots of huge ferns, but I can't figure out how the struthiomimi which I started out with would fit into that.