Antarctic travels, and lost paintings

My last post here was Halloween, as the winter holiday season is typically a time that I try to step away from the computer for as much as possible. While it's a brutal winter back home in the Northeast, I've been living my own version of the frozen wasteland, by reading a lot about Antarctica recently.

There's a classic travelogue of Capt. Scott's journey to the South Pole (with special focus on a side trip to gather penguin eggs) by Apsley Cherry-Garrard, written in the 1920s but taking place in 1910-1913. It's available free as a public domain text from all the usual places (I got mine from Manybooks because those are always formatted nicely). The writing style is humorous at times, and at other times gets bogged down in a lot of description of coordinates, numbers of ounces of pemmican consumed at various meals, etc.

One of the most delightful things I learned in this reading was that one of the members of the expedition, Dr. E.A. "Bill" Wilson, did watercolors throughout the journey, some of which have been preserved. These photos from the Terra Nova expedition can be seen at various places online -- I am borrowing a glimpse of them from the Cool Antarctica website. It lists them as courtesy the NOAA. I love the soft colors and the otherworldly quality of these paintings -- they were done under extreme, freezing conditions, with the few materials he had at hand, and that is part of why I love them so much.

by Dr. E.A. Wilson "Scott's Last Expedition" 1913

by Dr. E.A. Wilson "Scott's Last Expedition" 1913

The past few years have been full of "Scott of the Antarctic" related news, in fact....in 2012 they found his ship, the Terra Nova, off the coast of Greenland... and incredibly, one year ago they finished retracing the Scott expedition, a wondrous event I wish I had been following in real time.

At any rate, whatever the reason for my interest in Antarctic (and Arctic, which I also want to read up on) exploration, I like doing paintings of icy world landscapes as well so here is my contribution to the genre for now, "Penguin Peak" --

I made a special trip to the aquarium pyramid at Moody Gardens in Galveston to meet some penguins in honor of my recent interests.Unfortunately, there is not a "swim with the penguins" option.

Here are a few other things new in my Etsy shop. First, a new version of a painting I originally did in 2003, but I wanted to recreate it and eventually make prints from it as well. I don't have hi-res pics of my paintings from that far back, but I also like to repaint, and hopefully improve upon them. "On the Green Moon" is available as an original painting for a mere $50 for a limited time.

I also uncovered some older paintings that I haven't had up for sale anywhere in a long time. I kept them in my personal stash but I'm willing to put them out there, for now....if there are no takers I'll put them back in my personal stash. :)

This butterfly fairy is 9 x 12 and only $60 for the duration of this listing. She is based on a vintage postcard photo but I added all the fairy and butterfly elements.

And finally, a D&D inspired piece showing some classic dungeon monsters taking a coffee or tea break. Also at a special price and for a limited time. I can make prints of any of these on request but I haven't specifically listed prints on their own yet.

We do, however, have some of the most popular prints back in stock right now...including ghosts, banana slugs, cloaked witches and this, possibly my most popular piece...these always sell out quickly when I get a few in stock!

Halloween In June (or May, even)

A couple of Etsy teams I'm pleased to be a member of, are starting up Halloween in full force this summer- Halloween Artist Bazaar and Spooky Cute Team. I started selling Halloween art online regularly in 2001, but it wasn't around Halloween...it was actually in February or March. As it turns out, those of us who really like this stuff, don't pay too much attention to the calendar. In fact, I was usually always so busy with other things in the fall with work, that I didn't do a lot of new Halloween art in the weeks leading up to the big day.

But right now, with the worst of summer heat still ahead of us, is a good time to start stockpiling these things, so to that end, I present a small selection of some of my "classic" Halloween paintings that are currently available as originals, and as prints. I have many more but these are some images that have proven popular in the 12 or so years since I originally imagined them, and I'm pleased to actually have originals available for these in 8 x 10 or 9 x 12 inch formats at rather reasonable prices. They are all $80 or below, which isn't bad for an original work of art, and the prints can be had for $8 (5x7) or $12 (8x10).

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"Haunted" is listed under another name on my painting gallery website Art by Sarada but I like this name better for now. :) An 8 x 10 this is a recently repainted original, and the colors in person are very soft yet striking. Although prints are not yet listed on my Etsy site, they can be made on request.

 "Sisters of the Crypt" is another 8 x 10 recently repainted, with prints also available on request. A zombie girl with Frankenstein stitching and a ghostly mummy girl, descend hand in hand upon an unsuspecting world.

Also available as an original, a small print, or a large print by request, "Ghost Sisters of the Tower," another of my paintings of pairs of ghostly creatures - this is a 9 x 12 and I have painted several versions over the years, but I'm happy to say that an original is in stock as of this writing.

Another of my most-requested paintings, "Dark Lanterns" is available as an original 9 x 12 painting, a small print, or a larger print upon request.

"A Ghostly Meeting" is a painting I always wanted to use on greeting cards, and while that is still something that may come down the road, right now it is available as an original 9 x 12 painting, a small print, or a larger print upon request.

Finally for this post, but not for my shop, is "Alice in the Dark Woods," a sort of signature painting for me -- remembering my dear departed kitty companion, and my impression of a Halloween-inspired Alice in Wonderland wandering through a mushroom forest. As with most of my paintings listed here, it is available as an original 9 x 12, a small print, and a larger print can be made on request.

So that's the first layer of Halloween that is available this summer. I will be adding more to this as the months progress, of my classic Halloween paintings, newly available both as originals and prints...and other stuff too. And please check out the other shops in both of these teams as the months move towards autumn!

New painting of my purple fairy

I've been working for some time on doing new paintings of some of the favorite images from my gallery, where I've collected some of the paintings I've sold over the last ten years. Above is "Dark Lanterns," which I have painted on several occasions, but until this new version I haven't been able to take a high-res scan of it.

Here's the gallery with my older works in it:

http://www.artbysarada.com

The scans that I made before the paintings were sold in 2001-2003, were not really of a quality that I could make prints from. So although I've had many requests for prints or other reproductions of them, I couldn't offer them.

I have a few things in my Etsy shop as "photographs/prints" but I really want to add to that and offer more things in the future. I didn't have much interest from a Cafepress shop, though it still exists:

http://www.artbysarada.com/cafe.html

But I would like to be able to offer my own reproductions of things in various forms, some day. Maybe little necklaces, in addition to things like postcards, notecards and the current photographic prints.

So far, the fairy painting above, and these two below, are the repaints I've done for Halloween, so I will be able to do more with these images in the future. I've also done several for winter.

As always, if anyone sees anything in my gallery (above) that you think would make a good offering as a print, please let me know and I'll put it on my list for consideration!

Ghastly ghost flowers

This summer, it has been unusually rainy in New Jersey -- it rained almost every day in June, and July was unseasonably cool and damp as well. One of the results of this downpour has been the proliferation of every type of mushroom in the woods. And among the strange collection of yellow and brown amanitas, jelly molds and fungus, death caps and destroying angels, a strange flower blooms.

I walk in the woods almost every day that the weather cooperates, even if only for a few minutes, but I have never before seen the elusive Indian Pipe in one of my favorite walking places, though I have looked for them in the darkest shadows among the mushrooms. Pale and waxy, they resemble mushrooms themselves - a tiny cluster of pale white stems bearing drooping bell-like blossoms. Flecked with the dark soil from which they erupt after a heavy rain, they seem to favor woods like the one I frequent, full of birch and beech, pine and poplar.

Among their other names are ghost flower, corpse plant, and fairy smoke -- quite a poetic plant! With that in mind I imagined that at its roots a wan fairy might lie in wait beneath the earth. I will probably do several paintings on this theme, but this is the first. I haven't decided whether to offer her up for Etsy or eBay yet, but I wanted to share her right away.