Frog, Lizard & Pug

A random collection of critters . . .

"Envy Green" a mixed media ACEO of a green Tree Frog (aka Pacific Chorus Frog). I used a sepia colored Micron ink pen, watercolor and color pencil for this one.

Original sold, but magnets are available here.

My friend Sandy provided the wonderful reference photo for this drawing.
On the left is her original photo and on the right you can see how I flipped, rotated and cropped her photo to use as the reference for the art.


I've also put a video on YouTube. It shows the steps in creating this drawing. Watch the video

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"Wrinkles" an ACEO pencil drawing of a pug


Original sold, but prints are available here.

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A listing in my Etsy shop:

And speaking of amphibians & reptiles (not sure how the pug got in here), thought I'd share this young western skink too. This is a photo I took of a skink I found near our garden. I know it's a youngster because of the blue tail. As they mature, the blue tail becomes brown. I'm offering limited edition ACEO-sized prints (2.5" x 3.5") of this photo. I'll only print 36 at this size and each print is signed and numbered.

click here to purchase

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Black Knight, White Knight - Colorful Chess Pieces

I created these 2 ACEOs for the eBay ATC/ACEO Enthusiasts Group's "Games" challenge that ended on Saturday. Each week the group has a different challenge (this week it happens to be "Blue", the week before, I think it was "Goddess"). Challenges encourage us to think outside of the box a bit and the only rule is that we have to include the challenge word in the title of the eBay auction listing and have some explanation about the group/challenge in our listing description. We also hope it will draw additional attention to the world of ACEOs with the "strength in numbers" concept: buyers will see a number of pieces with the same word in the title and be curious enough to check them out.

I started by taking a photo of the white knight from my chess set. I decided to work in color pencil and to use bright colors for the drawings and I wanted to do both the black and white knights, so I needed a dark version and a light version. I brought the photo into Photoshop and skewed the colors to get the shades I wanted for the black knight. Then I mirror- imaged that version and "inverted" the colors to get the shades I wanted for the white knight. Notice how inverting the colors reversed the color schemes.



I chose bright, complimentary colors for the backgrounds and used some of the same shades of yellow & blue color pencils for both drawings.

I created a video showing the steps in drawing White Knight. Watch the video on YouTube.

The eBay auctions for both knights end at 10:45 am on May 26th.

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Long-Awaited Nature Moment - Wood Ducks Coming Out of the Nest!

We live on some acreage with a pond (well, we live in a house on the acreage). Shortly after we moved in, my husband put up a number of bird nest boxes including a couple for wood ducks. Wood ducks are quite shy and we were pleased that they'd decided our pond was a suitable place to visit. Over the years, wood duck hens have successfully nested in the boxes and raised young, but the one thing we've never seen is the ducklings leaving the nest box. Well as luck would have it, I was finally able to see it happen!

The other morning, the dogs & I were coming back from our walk and I saw a duckling on the lawn below one of the boxes. I could hear the hen in the water calling to it and I also heard thumping, bumping & scratching in the box above. I shooed the little guy toward the water before the dogs saw it, quickly took the dogs in the house & grabbed my camera. As I walked back toward the box, I saw another duckling come plummeting out!

Near the box, I positioned myself in line of sight to the box opening, but out of sight of the hen (who was still in the water, calling softly). I could still hear commotion inside the box and occasionally, I'd see a little head bounce up into the opening. Finally, one popped out while I was there and I got a photo of it (not the best photo by any stretch, but it captured the moment). He/she hit the ground with a little thump, wandered around "peeping" and then headed toward the water. I thought there were still 2 ducklings in the box and it looked like mom had at least 7 following behind her in the pond - quite the brood! The 2 that were still in the box made it out later in the day.

Just so you know what a giant leap of faith this is for the little ducks, the box is mounted on a tree, at least 6 feet off the ground, with another foot to the opening. To get out of the box, they have to scramble up the side below the opening and jump out! They don't weigh much at all, so they're not hurt by the rough landing, but they must be a bit shaken up. Then they listen for the hen's call and head toward it - also a feat because they're such tiny little critters in a very big world.

It was an amazing moment that I'll never forget!

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More ACEOs - Including My Interpretation of Day of the Dead Art

Just a quick post to share 2 ACEOs that are currently available on eBay. The first is a different version of the orange & purple goats from my last post. I really liked the way the cropped image turned out so I decided to try another ACEO of the goats. This time I mirror imaged the reference photo and used 3 shades of ink pen for the drawing. This one is titled "A Fair Day" and it's available 'til May 11 at 6:30 pm.

The other ACEO subject is something new for me - I tried it because one of the eBay art groups looks for ways to "cross-promote" ACEOs - hoping someone will happen across them when looking for something else, wonder "hmmmm . . . what is an ACEO?" and find out more about them. So this cross-promo is "Day of the Dead" and my entry is "Dog of the Dead". I used a real coyote skull for reference and looked up Day of the Dead art on the internet to get some ideas of typical patterns, colors, etc. I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out!

Click here for my current ACEO auctions.

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