My second interpretation of the Mockingjay as an actually species of bird,

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A late submission to last week’s Illustration Friday word, Grounded.

Please excuse the non-art related post but I had to share these pictures of my birds on the Christmas Tree. The yellow parakeet is Ziggy Stardust and the blue lovebird is Magius.

Illustration Friday, Round! I can’t believe how quickly christmas is sneaking up on me. Preparing myself for the holiday season and will hopefully begin decorating the house today. I’ve also been thinking about organizing calendar but most of my pieces are vertical and I have no clue how to lay them out for a horizontal format. Would blank space on both sides look silly? 

A quickie for this week’s Illustration Friday word, Silence. See the video where I work on it in Photoshop at, http://angelarizza.tumblr.com/post/12955317339/silencedemo.

My Owl-Jack-o-Lantern for this year.

Some shots I took at the Central Park Zoo, Monday.

Some more endangered animals, peek at the abc book I’m working on. Debating whether I should keep scanning these or try to photograph them, I feel they lose some of their depth and luminance with the scanner. But it’s soo hard to get that nice crispness with a camera and tripod….

This week’s illustration friday word was ‘beginner’ so I made my piece based on a creation myth of an Earth Diver. It’s a popular myth among native american cultures and coastal civilizations. The common idea is that the world is mostly asleep when life first began, and the earth diver, often depicted as a bird or fish, awakens first. It searches for a suitable place to build land and finally creates the world by digging up mud from the bottom of the ocean. I tried transferring my traditional technique to a more digital one. I also attached a sneak at my children’s book about endangered species, here is an Arowana. Asian Arowanas have recently become endangered due to their popularity with aquariums and asian cultures. They are thought to resemble dragons and the Golden Arowana has been known to sell for over $10,000. Native to southeast Asia their population is being better controlled and protected from international trade. Their environment is also being taken over by humans and the species are also grown on fish farms.

A few more.