New: Happy Puffin Painting

Hello again. This week's offering  is a new and happy puffin painting.

He's inspired by the fascinating Audobon webcams featuring the antics of live puffins in Maine in the breeding season. Which I found courtesy of the equally amazing nature  and animal webcams at Explore.org (which is *such* great go-to -and free-site  for a mood-boost when you need one, by the way).

Anyway, back on the subject of the puffin, this little cutey not only looks great in all the ways you might expect, as in this framed print,

Puffin Art Print

But also, with the whites and blues   in the puffin print pattern version of this design look really stunning on items for the bathroom, like this shower curtain and bath mat.

Puffin bath mat

Puffin shower curtain

Finally, if you're feeling like a spot of papercraft instead, he's also the main feature on new puffin-themed card-making sheets over at Craftsuprint. 

So I hope these puffins brighten up your weekend in some way. Have a good one, and see you next week.

Every Flamingo Has His Day...

Some time in June, I drew this flamingo. And for reasons that were undoubtedly good at the time, I didn't post him on the blog. This was even though (apart from his legs and feet, which needed a surprising amount of thought) he was quick and easy to draw. Instead, I decided he wasn't "good enough", and needed "a purpose". (Am wondering now exactly why I thought that. He's a flamingo drawing...Which is probably purpose enough, in the circumstances...:-)). 

Anyway, I then set about attempting to "improve" him. At one stage I even sent him to the carnival, metaphorically speaking...

And yet, still nothing seemed right for him.

Then, out of the blue, there was a weekly challenge at Spoonflower, the theme of which was to be "vintage flamingos". And suddenly, he had found his niche. As a vintage 1950's lawn flamingo, he didn't even need those rather troublesome legs (sorry, Mr Flamingo) but just a simple pole.

And voila, this design was borne, almost as quickly as most of the original drawing.

The Spoonflower challenge was just for fun. But it does make a nice, fun fabric, both at Spoonflower and Zazzle.

Every Flamingo Has His Day...

So I don't know about you, but what I took from this is that every flamingo has his day. There I'd been, trying to turn him into the "perfect" flamingo, when he was destined to be an intentionally-fun lawn flamingo all along.

 In other words, perhaps every idea that comes to any of us in a clear form, is worthy of shaping,  however bizarre it seems at first. More than that, is likely to have a purpose down the line, without excessive stressing out on the part of the artist/writer/musician/thinker/insert your preferred means of carrying out ideas here, on the part of any of us.

What do you think? Have you ever had an idea that seemed strange at the time, but later slotted in mysteriously perfectly into your life or work, in a way you couldn't have predicted at first? Do please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments.

Daily Illustration #29: Crow Experiment in Digital Charcoal

Not sure about how this experiment with digital charcoal in CraftArtist 2 turned out. Not as upbeat as normal, that's for sure.

Still, you live and learn.

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