Endangered Ark Art Cards Now Available!

Now available at my bigcartel.com store, the Endangered Ark Art Card set, both Open and Limited Editions!

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The Endangered Ark Art Card Deck is beautifully designed art playing card deck featuring 52 unique endangered species, plus two Joker cards and an artist listing card. The cards I contributed to this deck are the Amur Leopard, the Black Rhino, and the Day Gecko images.

The Limited Edition decks are hand-numbered in gold and feature a leaf image on the side to differentiate them from the Open Edition, and are limited to 1000 decks; I only have a few of these. Also included with the LE decks are three (3) business-card-sized magnets: one each of the leopard, gecko, and rhino. The decks can be signed if desired.

An Open Edition is also available, signed or unsigned.

Photos of the beautiful artwork for this deck:

First half of the Deck
Second half of the Deck
Sample Images 1
Sample Images 2

For more information, please see the official Endangered Ark Art Card website. If you'd prefer to buy from the project organizer, you may order from that site as well.

BigCartel.Com Store

BigCartel: I now have a BigCartel store, if you are looking for a Pathfinders Totem Cards Deck, my ArtZone comic, or a 2009 Werewolf Calendar. I'll be updating it with more things too. I've also gotten a PO Box, finally!

Endangered Ark

Here is the work I did for the Endangered Ark Art Card Deck. Presales are still available here! (there are also some neat things like keychains and LE prints). I will have some to sell online and at art shows, but for now, you can get in on the presale directly from the site! Remember, ten percent of the proceeds from decks bought directly from the site of the Project will be donated to charities decided upon by the participating artists.

As always, I like my pencils better than my originals... (more practice for me, eh?), so here are both, of the Amur Leopard, Black Rhino, and Day Gecko.

        
These are the images as I did them; they are slightly different (cropped, as necessary) for the final cards. In doing these, I kept in mind that they would be printed smaller, so I tried to be conscious of how they'd look scaled down - would they read okay? would they clog up too much? does anything jump out as wrong? - and so on. I attempted to be as true to the animals as possible, looking at many images of the animals to make sure I had a good sampling of references (mmmm, research) — though I am not a photorealist, so they are noticeably stylized.

Besides the decks, I will have prints available, and perhaps some LE prints too, as well as the pencil originals of the leopard and gecko.

Thanks, as always, for looking! :) More soon!

Happy Holidays!

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More from my Pen Sketchbook Project

Here are some more images from my ongoing personal Pen Sketchbook Project. These images were all done over the last year - mostly last Winter and Spring, and this Winter, too; I was busy with other projects for most of the rest of the year, and didn't have much in-between time to sketch for myself. Why did I sketch more last winter and this one? Well, schedule-wise it worked out that P's coming home on later trains, so I have more time to wait at the train station (where many of these are done). Also, while in the summer and early fall it's light enough at the train station in the afternoon to do nice work, in the winter it's dark and I can't see well enough to work on a good picture for someone else... so I scribble these instead. Here's a photo of where and how I draw at the station. XD Note, I am now going back and working on them more, as I feel like it. They evolve over time.

Click to view full picture - some of the thumbnails are cropped.

First is a guardian lion type creature (all-black, all-gold, and white lions are special to me) - not a real lion of course. Done to a-ha's Here I Stand and Face The Rain ("Trust me / For whom I am / Lay all your pains / Into these hands"). Second is a sort of manticore, though not a "by the books" one. Yeah, more weird human faces. Third popped into my head, a peaceful creature. I debated giving this one a mouth, but left it off - these are symbolic, after all. Fourth shows some random little owlthings. And Fifth is inspired by Nine Inch Nails' song, Letting You ("We are letting you GET AWAY!").

    
Have questions? Here's my disclaimer: Now, before anyone says (and rightly so) that the anatomy's wrong, or they're not researched well, or there are mistakes, or they're messy and unfinished, or asks where my "usual" type and style of artwork has gone - don't worry; these pieces are just weird things from my head, drawn at odd moments (waiting at the train, at lunch, while waiting at the barber's for my husband etc.), and actually give a good idea of what I draw for myself, when I am inspired and not worried about anatomy, or historical accuracy, or mass appeal. There is a lot of of stylization and symbolism here!

I hoped you liked this little glimpse into my mind. :) More soon, and thanks for looking!

Art Post: Projects and WIPs

Well, as promised, here's some bits and pieces of what I've been working on, and some older pieces I haven't shown before, and some WIPs. To start off, here are some parts of my last big project for the year, a comic-sized collection of my art, which I did in the Fall and over the Thanksgiving break. The first is cropped and the second is a border for something.

  
Next, a trio of leopards for various reasons. First is a pencil sketch idea I had for someone that I didn't finish. Second is a piece for a very deserving friend of mine, with as many of her interests as I could fit in. The heraldic wolf at the end of the runner is based on an awesome design done for her by the wonderful and talented Angela Butt; the other designs on the fabric and the stag are adapted from Scythian art and artifacts. The leopard is supposed to be stylized, like my old leopard with a magazine.

  
Coming up, more art, a Sketchbook Project post, and a WIP post. And trades and gift art are still in the works, too. As always, thanks so much for looking! I really appreciate it. :)

Fifth Anniversary

In all the rush and craziness, I just wanted to take the time to note, for myself if no one else: 11-08-2008 was our Five-Year Anniversary. As a matter of fact, we spent the day at someone else's wedding! My in-laws sent flowers, though and my parents dropped off a dinner treat for us. It was a nice day. We'll celebrate more when we're off next week. The image above is part of a silly little card I made for him.