Dino -bit

A little bit of a hint of what I'm up to as my next project. It was also designed at my former work place during break. As you can see I used the back of an old time sheet to quickly jot down my idea for a logo design.
It couldn't have been paint fume induced this time since when your in that state your brain is pretty much mush. ;) LOL

Happy couple

The final fix a pic, hurrraaaaa! Apparently its a pic of my great aunt and uncle. I heard that she was a great jam and baked goods maker. So that's where I get it. ;) They were also both grade 4 teachers. It's just to show that I have so much to learn about my family because I know so little of them. Meh, blame the ocean. :)

Caught in Paradise

My latest illustration and another tropical themed one at that. A graceful looking cat catching its latest dinner in the form of bronze statue fountain. I’m not exactly sure why I chose to make the cat into a bronze statue but it seems to suit the scene well. Original drawing from my sketch book found here. Illustrated on textured paper. Painted with traditional watercolours, inks, some airbrushing, some coffee ink and clear coated with clear acrylic.

Portrait of a cousin

Another fixed pic of one of my cousins. At a later date, I might revisit the pic in the future to take the texture out of it, which was caused by textured paper.

Two little girls

Another fixed pic of my mom when she was little. She's the one with no ribbons obviously. Oh and I'm down to two pics left to fix Yippy!

The gangs all here.

This times restored pic is of my mother when she was a kid. She looks a lot like me with out the glasses. In fact I still look the same if I pulled my hair back like that even at my current age. Ha!

preview of Caught in paradise

Another tropical themed artwork is in the works. I originally sketched it at work on a break. Possibly some of it was inspired by paint fumes aside the usual thoughts of inspiration. Finished with tracing it on textured paper and started with painting the background. I just hope the background works out cause so far I’m not quite see it. I am as usual using samples to help me visualize how it should look but it just doesn’t look as full so far. Probably because of all the distractions as always will not stop me because of that.

Updates and a pic of my young mom

Its a pic of my mom probably in her late teens early 20's. She is babysitting a young boy. When she was still living in Croatia before she got married, she taught as a daycare teacher. A day care teacher over there at the time was equivalent to a grade 1 teacher over here.
Kind of ashamed that children aren't teached like that over here otherwise children would be much more smarter around here. Instead they make dumb cartoon shows for kids like Dora the explorer that talk down to kids and dumb every thing down. Its a shame that cartoons aren't seen as just another form of entertainment for all ages. Instead they have to slap on the word education and make some money when really all it would be doing is brainwashing in to stupidity.
If you want smart kids, play with them, share with them don't dumb every thing down to the point of Dora the explorer. Yeesh!

Anyways also updated the MMMM section in the Secret Treasure vault of my K Tigress's Virtual Gallery Lair.

In a field of corn

The latest repaired pic features I guess another pic of one of my cousins probably some time in either the late 60's early 70's in a corn field. Again I had to repair the colour est.

60's in the snow

Some pic taken in the 60's with I guess one of my cousins who I barely know about.

Tranquil Tropic

New in Miscellaneous; Finally the finishing touches are done on this thing. Its hard to finish things when you have so many other things that occupy your time. I kind of wanted a banner for my boring door and something comforting to look at so I designed this originally in my sketch book, One of many drawings, fixed it up on the computer, blew it up to fit on a piece of cloth I bought at the store and took my time airbrushing it. I later cut a piece of burlap and sewed it on then added a few pieces of bamboo for it to hang from and wallah. Don't you just wish you could just jump in? I'm calling it Tranquil Tropic. Is it a sun set or is it sunrise? It's for you to determine that. The chair is just ready for you to add the towel and lounge in and sip that drink. I was fairly satisfied with it although I think I could have added some more shadows on the bottom part of the stone banisters at least, otherwise I'm pretty satisfied with it.

On a hill some place

This repaired pic was taken in the same year frame as the other one in 85. It was taken in Medjogoria where that group of children at the time had a spiritual meeting with the blessed Mother Mary about future events, things that must change and so on. In the pic you can see one of the people here who had the meeting with Mother Mary talking with one of my dear relatives. The pic was in only in two pieces as you can see and there fore was really easy and quick to fix.

Venison stew

Another fixed pic. I definitely know something about this pic since I was there in 1985 enjoying some of that venison. It was on a traditional farm in Croatia some time in late August. The place had no electricity and even had an outhouse complete with smell. LOL the whole place was on the top of a hill near a vineyard and was full of stinging nettles. Ouch! I was going on to grade 6 at the time so I had to have been either 11 or 12 at the time. But oh that stew was so darn good.

A Boy and his rabbit.

Yet another fixed pic. Can't wait to finish fixing these. Really getting bored with these.

Another fixed pic.

Another fixed pic from my collection of ripped to pieces pictures.



Update......
Almost finished my tropical themed banner. Just have to finish the cobble stone, the chair and the tropical drink on the image. As I said before will put the whole thing on a background of burlap and hang it on some bamboo.

He's called Punk rat

He's a sock puppet made from 2 socks. I used a drawing for inspiration that I sketched in my sketchbook and made some simple patterns from them. Using some foam sheets you can get at any craft store I made the puppet have some shape using some of those patterns. I also used some laundered vintage for the mouth, ears, tongue, chest and nose. Then I did some airbrushing on the face, chest and paws. I used googly eyes for well the eyes and used some special non-toxic glue to glue them on. Then I sewed on some eyelids for some more personality. I outlined some parts of the mouth. Then I took some black yarn and stiffened them with some stiffener and after they were dry, I pushed them though the muzzle for whiskers. Finally I found some fuzzy punky pink hair and sewed it on. The teeth are made from some kind of clothing foam. There you go. I was going to put a teeny tiny Band-Aid on his nose for added personality but didn't have one. Oh yeah his collar is made from a belt and I put Velcro for easy removal. Can't make up my mind though whether I would like to trim the whiskers or not. I mean he looks cool with long messy ones but then again trimmed would look good as well. Hummm. I think eventually I'd like to make more of these glorified sock puppets and the next idea would be a Indian elephant.

just an update

Almost finished that sock puppet. It looks really cool since it’s not your conventional sock puppet but more like a glorified one considering I added things like airbrushing and other things. Its really environmentally friendly since most of my materials that I used would have normally ended up in some landfill. Don't worry all the materials I used have been thuraly washed and you can tell cause every thing has a nice springtime smell to it.
I’m looking forward to show you guys.

planing

Started to work on a new project that was some time in the works. I had the idea for a while but as always get side tract for one reason or another. It’s going to be an airbrushed banner with a tropical theme to it. The airbrushed image is going on a cloth canvas, which will be sewn on top of burlap. I think I’m going to put a special solution to stiffen and to prevent the burlap from fraying too much. Then it’s going to have some bamboo inserts so that later it can be hung from twine so that it can go on my door. It’s a good alternative to creating murals which I can’t do considering that I still live in my parents house. Another bonus being that at least I can take it with me and it will be another great portfolio piece.

I just started to trace the line drawing I originally fixed up on the computer from my original drawings but still have to look for some references of tropical drinks. I can trace that drawing later since it wouldn’t matter if some of the previous tracing from the other drawing show though.

Fixed a pic

Been rather busy lately so haven't had a whole lot of time being online or work on many of my things but I have managed to finish another repair on a old photo. I still have a whole slew of these to fix up though since that time someone in the family had a break down and ripped up all those pics.

Oh and hay this new FireFox is really cool not to mention handy. Just installed the latest one. Bin a bit of a slacker though in downloading it. Really saves me time on correcting my spelling mistakes. But apparently it still needs some work since correcting spelling on words at the beginning of sentences is still a bit buggy. For some reason it can't detect the capital letter and there fore changes it to a small case when you correct the spelling. Oh well maybe in the next Fire fox.

Well heres the latest pic. Enjoy.

Hmmm

Ok that was weird. I guess this beta stuff has lots of bugs still in it. I had a person comment in here but for some reason the darn program just deleted it . :( Sorry about that. Also I tried to put in a link for the free program that I found but the beta just started to just monkey around with me so I'll try again.
Again I'm sorry about loosing your comment. None the less here's the free peogram.
Handy but buggy. Its free what you expect. VirtualDub

Fixed

Ok most of the bugs are fixed; I hope and please enjoy the two animations that I couldn’t show earlier. I kind of found out that it was the compression code that was giving me the problems. Youtube just didn't like the ones that were already being used hence the black screen.
I was going to use this one program to fix the problem that I had but for some odd reason Its messed up so I had to go look for a temporary program. I managed to find this nice and adequate little program that I got from Download.com and best of all it was free. Apparently it was made by a amateur programmer at the time so the program is a bit buggy at times. But at least it does what its suppose to. Nice program but you can’t use it to really edit your movies. Will have to look for a decent one in the future. Don’t need it right now, I think.

Scratch that.....

Humm it looks like I have some technical issues with two of my animations I haven't noticed till now. Well actually with Youtube. I'm not sure why that is but here's one that actually works till then.
Sorry about that.



A neat little walk cycle of a turtle. Originally a test for a friends animation.

Some animation

I have all my decent animation up that I made in previous years. I hope to make more eventually when I get a new computer. I have yet to upload my short though that I still have to figure out as to how.
None the less please enjoy a samp of what I put up on my web site. As always, to see more of my stuff check out my web site.

not so old fixed pic

Another pic fixed. This one had a lot of pieces and as you can see in colour as well. The pic is of a wedding and the male in the pic was a former best friend that I was a best friend with since I was a tot. I miss him dearly as a best friend but some things for me unfortunately I can't seem to keep. Oh well life goes on. None the less, as well as piecing it together again I enhanced the colour with out over doing.

"coo coo"

Made this cute little animated gif of a ring neck dove a few days ago. Just click to see it coo. Also updated a few things in my web site and opened the Life drawing section of the Animation section. Don't have any pics in it yet but will shortly.

No missing links

This one was pretty quick in finishing. I really wasn't planning on working on this one so soon only the other day I thought I putts around a bit with something I was going to use for the new Links section. I played with it and played with it but I still couldn't find a use or make it look like how I wanted it to look for the new Link's section. So while fooling around with something else, looking at bunch of cool looking fonts, I spotted what I was looking for. I kind of messed around with that removing bits and peaces and adding other and finally came up with something that looked really cool. I couldn't leave well enough alone so I end up finishing it up in a few days and wha la! Now I just have to put it all together.

Not totally there

It’s a bit frustrating that I didn't have all the pieces to this photo but that's the way the ball bounces. I'm kind of hoping by some miracle that I do find the missing pieces to this old photo of my mother's cousins or who ever they are but for now I will just have to live with it. Total hours fixing it I think 2- 3 not much.

new edition

Just finished a new part of what’s going to be for my sub site of personal treasures. Now I will be able to move all the treasure stuff from my old site to the new one. Still to make, artwork for my links section. Anyhow I used a backdrop from one of my cartoons as a nice intro. It turned out pretty nice and didn't take me as long as the previous intro, which was a machine frame for my animation section.

Here take a peek. Enjoy.

You know it would really make a really cool children's book cover or something.

Repaired photo

A repaired and restored old photo of a teenager friend of my mother. It was accidentally ripped to pieces but not out of anger but out of depression. There are many more photos like this only some have missing pieces and can not be fully restored. I think I did a pretty good job of it. Of course it wasn't that hard to do. It was one of the easer ones. I've done more complicated restorations, one of the photos being of my dad when he was young. The paper had this annoying texture, which made the photo scan with this annoying pattern, which was complicated to get rid of. It took me several weeks maybe two to restore the whole thing properly.

Nautical style Christmas ball

Click one the pic that shows the whole ornament to see all sides of it.

A Christmas ornament that I designed with a nautical theme to it. Using materials such as a glass ball, twine for the net affect, an assortment of shells with bits of coral that I personally dove and found from Florida and made little acrylic paint starfish to accent the whole thing. Then for the finally I added raffia for the ribbon and a nice clear coat to make the shells all shiny and pretty to look at. I think in the future I would love to make more of these hand made Christmas ornaments out of things that I can recycle and make it really attractive looking. As I said before I wouldn’t mind trying out to see if they would sell on E bay.
Probably won’t make it this year to sell them on E bay but there is always next year during the free promotion thingy they always have. I’ll be able to take advantage of this since I haven’t tried to sell any thing there yet. It would be fun to see if it does sell.

Christmas "E"

What I’ve been working on lately is a Christmas ornament. I decided to use some stuff around the house since I got tons of it and I might as well get rid of it in a useful fashion. Might even eventually sell it on E bay to make a little cash as well, I mean why not, eh?
I got a glass ball, made a twine fishing net and stuck it on. Then glued a few shells that I got in Florida a while ago and I have yet to polish the shells I stuck on and finally I’ll probably stick a beige raffia ribbon. Yeah you guessed it it’s a nautical style ornament. I decided to use a neutral ribbon so it draws attention to the interesting shells and the net design.

I’ve also been working on restoring a ripped up old photo. Look for it soon in the Mini galleria section. You can find the link at my web site.

Newly renovated

Just finished the new designs for the animation pages on my web site and most of the stuff for the character designs I had before are up again. It looks super. If you're wondering why I didn't go with the jungle vines though out the whole web site is because to me it wouldn't have all fit with the theme I was going with, which is again based on one of my cartoons. I kind of wanted the visitor feel like they’re in my cartoon world and visiting the different environments while looking at my artwork. As an addition to my artwork I have a series of Easter eggs that can be found in the animation pages for added amusement. If all goes well, I will add more possibly with a few simple sounds FX. As well as the interesting Easter eggs, I again experimented with the Styles in Photoshop with the results that I expected for the machine frames.

My other personality pictured

Finally got around to finishing this thing. It was originally a doodle in one of my sketchbooks. The time was right and so I though I finish it up. Thought it would be a pretty cool idea if I do it entirely with Styles in Photo shop since I could get a really nice metallic look with out creating more work for my self. It turned out pretty much the way I hope it would look. Would have even looked cooler if I could have experimented in Maya with it but don't have it installed currently and can't unless I get a new computer. I just don't want to strain an already elderly computer. The pic still looks cool none the less. Please note that this character is not based on my characters for my cartoons but was intended for an avatar pic and then an experiment. As always its still mine and no one else’sand you know what that means. ;)