For a change of pace, how about a short post about my own artwork?
ACEO stands for "Art Cards, Editions and Originals". They are the size of a standard trading card (ie, a baseball card or card from a trading card game like "Magic"). Since the cards can be sent in a small mailing envelope, ACEOs are a fun and inexpensive way to collect original artwork from a wide variety of artists. They can also be traded at, say, a place where a lot of artists and their fans congregate maybe?
Yes, Boston Comic-con is fast approaching. I want to go for broke and sell some original art there, but I'm astonishingly short on ACEOs. So I'm forcing myself to create an ACEO a day.
More specifically, I'm alternating between a rabbit from 700 Bunnies and a hadrosaur for the upcoming Art Evolved gallery. Hopefully, these subjects will prove popular. Probably going to charge a buck a piece for them, which (after a quick search around the 'net and a little case of Small Name, Big Ego-ism) is a steal.
As an aside, yes, I am using a certain paleoartist whose book I just finished *just* to double-check things like crest shapes, ect. Please don't call the Art Police!
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Off-Topic Soapboxing
Male readers, especially younger ones, I implore you to do something highly unusual: Paint your toenails pink. Do it! Do it for freedom of expression! Do it to help this poor kid feel less alienated! Especially do it to send a message to people who really, really, RE-HEEL-LY need to get a life (they are sold in stores right next to the clues and the over-its).
First off, I hope everyone had a wonderful Binary Day yesterday, and that everyone is having a great (enter sarcastic/satirical name for Columbus Day here) Day!.
When I was little, I got a dinosaur-themed calendar for Christmas one year. And I still remember it vividly, because it contained images like this:
After a recent trip to the library, I have learned that this is the work of Jane Burton, an animal photographer who collaborated with our old friend Dougal Dixon on the New Dinosaur Library series, published in America by Gareth Stevens Publishing in 1987.
Now, this is one of those posts I am hoping to get a lot of responses to. It's been difficult to find more information about Burton and her work online (for example, I apologize tremendously if it turns out that this isn't the same Jane Burton as the late wildlife photographer). Specifically, there is very little information about her dinosaur photographs, which you'd think would be more popular.
Anyway, how did she create these images? One of the Dinosaur Library books gives us a very brief idea:
This helps explain why some of the images look more like straightforward paintings (the styracosaur model looks more like a cardboard cutout, but it might be the odd angle), and others look like photographs of elaborate miniatures.
Now, I'm on record as criticizing dinosaur art that makes it very hard to see what said dinosaurs looked like. Jane Burton liked to use dramatic back-lighting a lot, and unfortunately, this makes it a little difficult to get a good look at the animals. Still... her work is very very cool, even in this post-"Jurassic Park" / "Walking With Dinosaurs" world. Here are some highlights:
I'm kind of in love with this one:
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Fellow bird artists, here's something to add to our bookmarks: Brendan Body's massive tutorial on animating and drawing birds in flight. There's a lot of information, but most of it is backed up by lots and lots of video clips (warning: Quicktime).
Speaking of birds...
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Big Sit Results! Went up to the lake and saw fourteen species. Not bad.
1. Ring-billed Gull (Larus delawarensis)
2. Mourning Dove (Zenaida macroura)
3. Downy Woodpecker (Picoides pubescens)
4. Northern Flicker (Colaptes auratus)
5. American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos)
6. Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata)
7. Black-capped Chickadee (Poecile atricapillus)
8. Tufted Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor)
9. Red-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta canadensis)
10. White-breasted Nuthatch (Sitta carolinensis)
11. Chipping Sparrow (Spizella passerina)
12. Song Sparrow (Melospiza melodia)
13. American Goldfinch (Spinus tristis)
14. Purple Finch (Carpodacus purpureus)
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Art of the day! I cleaned out my camera and found a photo of the Pop Culture ACEOs before I painted them!
Which reminds me, I should get these up on ebay soon.
