Hanging Around

I am infatuated with clouds. One of the things that attracted me to Houston, aside from the lack of ice, was the huge blue skies and white puffy clouds. My phone has DOZENS of pics of the sky at various times of the day and weather conditions. But the puffy white ones on the sapphire sky just blow me away.

In my watercolor Practice, when I’m not inspired by anything else, I know I can whip out a few cloud pics for practice.

If you know any tips on how to make them more “cloud-like”, I’d love for you to share them with the rest of us.

Slow Work

You may remember that we have a pet crawfish named Bob. This is our sixth (sith) Bob, so I call him Darth Bob. In an effort to provide enrichment and fresh food I asked the pet store to let me have some pest snails. Normally people do everything to get rid of these things because they are born pregnant and will infest a tank pretty quickly.

So I started with about 15 and now have somewhere around 2000. I also added plants in tea lights. Darth Bob can eat whatever grows outside the lantern.

I really enjoy watching the snails and it inspired me to draw a few and I did a mini painting.

There’s a timelapse of me painting the snail over at the youtubes: https://youtu.be/CrY8Khg3Frk

The Howlings

Recently, the whole family took a trip with some friends to the Saint Francis Wolf Sanctuary. I took a lot of pics, but mostly of mushrooms I wanted to paint later.

In the gift shop on the way out I bought a patch for my motorcycle vest. When it came time to sew it on, however, I realized I hadn’t ridden the bike and it wouldn’t be right sewing on a patch I hadn’t earned. So I decided to load up and ride out for the day. About that time, Girl2 texted me to let me know she was home with me. I had no idea. I told her my plan and she said, “Say less! I’ll be right back down in jeans!” And that is how I ended up riding with my little girl for the day.

Since she suffered the ride out there, I got her a patch too. Now she needs a leather vest.

Also, here are the mushrooms…

If you paint them, please tag me in IG @theartisticbiker

Going to the Dogs

A recent acquaintance has invited me to display some of my works at a local fund raiser for dobermann rescues. That sounds like a lot of fun to me. She suggested I may get some commissions based on my dog paintings. I hope so, but really I’m just looking forward to a good time. She did send me some pictures of a couple of dobermanns I could paint for display. Here are the work ups I have done on them so far

I’ll update further during and after the show.

Limiting Facebook and IG

Pinup Practice

It has been a while since I’ve updated my website. Like so many others, I began using Facebook and Instagram to reach a wider audience. However, those platforms are zeroing in on creators and people with differing opinions. Discord updated their terms of service to say they could deplatform you for something you did while NOT on their platform. Imagine getting into an argument with someone and then trying to take a bus home, and the bus company won’t let you ride because they agreed with the person you were arguing with. It makes no sense.

Worse, they are closing in on risqué creators. If your art skills are good enough, the bots tag you. Once they start tagging you, the “punishments” compound, even if you get a previous violation overturned. One could probably argue that getting the previous violation overturned simply made them more intent on bringing you down.

With all that in mind, I’ll be doing what I should have been doing all along. I will publish on my website and share from there and through my newsletter. At least until my domain host and mail server decide to censor us too.