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!

Cryptids and Kaiju

I have the pleasure of being surrounded by some very delightful vinyl toys depicting that most compelling of Japanese movie monsters -- Hedorah, or the Smog Monster. Not only is he pretty groovy in "Godzilla vs. The Smog Monster" but these toys take his grooviness and develop it into a psychedelic color palette of infinite possibilities.

Clear, black, white, silver, metallic, glow-in-the-dark, flocked, and multi-colored, you could fill your house just with versions of this drippy fiend and his glowing red eyes.

In fact, some of them look good enough to eat. This guy below sent me looking for a bomb pop, or some kind of lemon-cherry-blue raspberry Italian ice.

Since I don't have an array of paintable figures for my own experimentation, though, I do have the ability to have some two-dimensional representations, so I've been kicking those around lately. This one resembles the tainted rainbow hues of an oil spill.

"Rainbow of Smog" 8 x 10 inch painting on canvas board

And this little guy just tries on some purple for a profile pic. I am quite sure I'll do more of these, as the colors continue to compel me, and it's a lot cheaper to paint my own Hedorahs than it is to buy up some limited run toys!

"Smog Monster in Profile" 5 x 7 inch painting on canvas board

 

But wait, there's more! Another favorite film is "Attack of the Mushroom People," aka "Matango"...

 

 

I had wanted to see this for most of my life, it seems, because nothing sounds more amazing and psychedelic than a Japanese film from the 1960s about people who eat mushrooms, and become mushroom people. What could possibly be better? It's a bit more bleak and psychological than your typical "monsters are coming to kill us" movie, but it nonetheless enjoys considerable cult popularity, decades later. It also lends itself to vinylification (?) quite splendidly. Look how psychedelic...

 I find this a pretty compelling subject as well, so I hope to do some more two-dimensional Matango paintings as I have time...here is the first.

"Beware of the Matango" 5 x 7 inch painting on canvas board

Being caught up in weird monsters and science fiction also means that I have cryptozoology on the brain. The popular image of the Mothman is particularly arresting, to me. You know the story, perhaps. Perhaps you don't. But either way, the big red eyes and wings make for a spooky thing. For some reason I thought he should have an ice cream cone, though. Maybe it's just because it's summer. Maybe I still have that Italian ice flavored Hedorah on the brain.

"In Seach Of...Ice Cream" 5 x 7 inch painting on canvas board 

Finally, for this installment, I really like UFOs, and since I've already painted them beaming up a unicorn, I thought I would dig deep for another creature that, who knows, perhaps aliens have some interest in. It would certainly explain a thing or two. Right?

"The Plot to Abduct Nessie" 5 x 7 inch painting on canvas board

Widget?

I'm trying out this widget (look to the right) from Craftcult, which shows a slideshow of items in my Etsy store and lets you see the prices, feedback, hearts, and other stuff. I thought it was pretty useful, let me know if you see if and have an opinion either way!

As I mentioned before, I will close my Artfire store until further notice around Sept. 19, since they only have Pro accounts and since my online sales activity is fairly sporadic and not a fulltime pursuit, I don't want to have a monthly charge at this point in time if I can't devote a lot of time to promoting it. I am going to keep working on making my Etsy offerings better and more diverse.

That reminds me, I have some UFO and alien themed things up right now -- the second in a series of UFO/Alien/Conspiracy theory paintings that I meant to get cracking on a long time ago, and I relisted some ACEOs that I haven't had in the shop in awhile.

First here is a new 6 x 8 inch painting with a bug-like lizard alien, Saturn and stonehenge that will make you look crazy for buying it and me crazy for painting it. Who can resist!!



Since everyone loves ghost bottles, I did a couple of ghost bottle ACEOs a couple years ago too but I didn't quite get around to selling them. These were hand-cut art paper, and although it looks like watercolor it was watered down acrylic paint.

More UFO abduction...


And more!...


Anyway I did these a couple of years ago but I had them tucked away for awhile and they are ready for sale again!

Mummies and UFOs

I've been enjoying mummies a lot lately. They don't get a lot of attention, in the grand scheme of horror type stuff, the way vampires and zombies do. I'm not saying that mummies need to have an HBO show or that a series of teen novels about sexy, sparkly mummies would necessarily be popular, but hey -- there's vampires, werewolves, zombies and mummies, when you get right down to the classics (and "Frankensteins" if we can call that a category, and maybe creatures that crawled out of lagoons), and let's have a little mummy love!

I think you can see what happened here. UFO crash, pyramid, etc. etc. equals glowing radioactive mummy brought back to life. You know how it is, these things happen! Anyway, I still see mummies making an appearance in Halloween stuff on the shelves so the dears haven't been entirely forgotten.

I listed this as 'geekery' on Etsy for a change, since I kind of like the idea for that category and they don't have a "just plain weird" option as far as i can tell!

We're gonna sit at the welcome table

When I start a UFO cult, this will be the cover for the brochure. I don't know if we're been watching too many UFO documentaries on late night cable, or if it's listening to Ya Ho Wha 13 in the car or re-playing Katamari Damacy again on the Playstation, but apparently something has snapped and I think I might have joined a rainbow flower hippie alien gnome UFO flower mushroom cult at some point in the last 24 hours.

And just to confuse things a little, there's some Tarot card imagery, with the black and white trees in the background similar to the pillars in the High Priestess card, and various planetary symbols scattered throughout, on the staves that the alien and gnome friends are holding.

The mystic white-robed priestess welcomes the craft to earth with a crescent moon in one hand and a red star/pentacle in the other. She is draped with blue flowers, her robe adorned with moons and stars, and a rainbow of flowers blossom over her head. An eye in a pyramid, and a crown-like headpiece with a third eye on her brow, complete her ritual garb. The UFO projects rainbow beams in all directions. Welcome, Alien Friends!

This one is on Etsy.