"BEHOLD! For I have created art... sorta... and stuff~!"
Greetings, all. Thought I might show you what I've been up to for the past week or so.
First of all, the dragons that I've been drawing in colored pencil (still a work in progress, but I've gotten far enough that there's something worth posting at this point):
I'm beginning to think I liked the original sketch better... not entirely happy with how the color's going down, but I'm going to finish it up and tweak it along the way and see what happens. Got to figure out what to do with all those darn rocks, as well as the green dragon's back - those are the two things that really bug me. Also, there's like another inch and a half to the right that got cut off in the photo.
Next up are the wire-wrap pendants:
I have, at the moment, run out of sterling silver wire, but I ordered some more... just waiting for it to show up! XD But here are some more stones I have waiting to be wrapped when it does:
The last photo is all jade, the other two are, of course, an assortment of different stones.
Lastly, we have the ornament I sent sidh for Christmas. :) She's a fan of Calvin and Hobbes ^^
I'll also try and take some photos of the bird ornaments I made for my aunts, sooner or later.
Also, some filtered & modified photos that I uploaded to deviantART recently:
Grey Flowers
Pink Flowers
Hmmm... not convinced I entirely like either of these... but I had fun playing around with filters along the way! ^^'
As for the rest of my life... cleaned my fish tanks today. At the end of December I put Shuu-kun and one of my DD-black angels from the Sept. auction in a ten-gallon tank together to see what would happen (w00t for angelfish blind dating services!) and lo and behold they got married and laid eggs on New Year's Day ^^ They now have about 40-50 wigglers (larval angelfish) sitting on the side of the tank; if they survive, they should be swimming by Tues. or Wed. 40 wigglers is far from a large clutch, but the female DD-black is young and still small... and this is good parenting experience for the new couple :) I'm rather surprised they didn't mess up, actually, this being their first spawn together and all, but they're proving to be great parents. I do need to name the DD-black girl, though - any suggestions?
The discus pairs are still working on hatching eggs, meanwhile, though I'm not all that worried - I've read that discus males can exhibit poor fertility up until 2 years of age (mine are less than a year and a half) and my ultra-hard water doesn't help much, I'm sure. Between their gaining experience and my ontinued experiments, I'm sure we can eventually hatch some little baby discs ^^
I also bought a young male long-nosed angelfish at a pet store a little while back. The long-nosed angelfish, Pterophyllum dumerilii, is an entirely different species than the typical, commercially bred angels (which are hybrid Pt. scalare), and is typically imported only on rare occasions - and only a handful of people breed them. Naturally, I had to have him for myself, rather than let some bum with no idea what they were doing take him home to their community aquarium and kill him in a month.
That said, here are some recent photos of the fishies:
The new couple - note the size of the young female (black) compared to a mature, dominant male angel like Shuu-kun (grey) - bulk-wise, he's probably four times her size.
The new Pterophyllum dumerilii. He won't sit still long enough to get a good photo!
The female discus, Nejibana ("Neji"), a cobalt (solid blue) from the Stendker discus hatchery. Ths is not a flattering photo of her - she's much more intensely blue and irridescent in person.
Neji's husband, Itegumo ("Ite"), fanning their clutch of eggs. He's kind of dark because he's wary of the camera - they get very defensive when they think their babies might be in danger.
Sorry all these photos are so yucky - I really need to clean the aquarium glass one of these days! The tea color of the water can;t be helped, though - it's a result of all the peat and driftwood in the tanks leeching tannins into the water. It softens and tempers the water quality to more closely match the natural Amazon blackwater habitat of the fish.
Other than the fish stuff, I didn't do much today... tomorrow, though, I might go hike up around the Aspetuck land trust ad see if there's anything worth taking pictures of. But I only intend to go out there if it gets several degrees over freezing... don't particularly want to suffer frostbite for photography's sake. Also, if I'm feeling particularly motivated, I might drive down the road to the reservoir and take a picture of that - I posted a photo of it in the summer on deviantART, and sidh was wondering what it looked like right now. Maybe the swans there will be feeling cooperative and let me take a few pictures of them, too. Who knows?
I feel kinda hungry now, so I think I'll go forage for food. ^^' I think there's some leftover pizza from last night that I can warm up...
First of all, the dragons that I've been drawing in colored pencil (still a work in progress, but I've gotten far enough that there's something worth posting at this point):
I'm beginning to think I liked the original sketch better... not entirely happy with how the color's going down, but I'm going to finish it up and tweak it along the way and see what happens. Got to figure out what to do with all those darn rocks, as well as the green dragon's back - those are the two things that really bug me. Also, there's like another inch and a half to the right that got cut off in the photo.
Next up are the wire-wrap pendants:
I have, at the moment, run out of sterling silver wire, but I ordered some more... just waiting for it to show up! XD But here are some more stones I have waiting to be wrapped when it does:
The last photo is all jade, the other two are, of course, an assortment of different stones.
Lastly, we have the ornament I sent sidh for Christmas. :) She's a fan of Calvin and Hobbes ^^
I'll also try and take some photos of the bird ornaments I made for my aunts, sooner or later.
Also, some filtered & modified photos that I uploaded to deviantART recently:
Grey Flowers
Pink Flowers
Hmmm... not convinced I entirely like either of these... but I had fun playing around with filters along the way! ^^'
As for the rest of my life... cleaned my fish tanks today. At the end of December I put Shuu-kun and one of my DD-black angels from the Sept. auction in a ten-gallon tank together to see what would happen (w00t for angelfish blind dating services!) and lo and behold they got married and laid eggs on New Year's Day ^^ They now have about 40-50 wigglers (larval angelfish) sitting on the side of the tank; if they survive, they should be swimming by Tues. or Wed. 40 wigglers is far from a large clutch, but the female DD-black is young and still small... and this is good parenting experience for the new couple :) I'm rather surprised they didn't mess up, actually, this being their first spawn together and all, but they're proving to be great parents. I do need to name the DD-black girl, though - any suggestions?
The discus pairs are still working on hatching eggs, meanwhile, though I'm not all that worried - I've read that discus males can exhibit poor fertility up until 2 years of age (mine are less than a year and a half) and my ultra-hard water doesn't help much, I'm sure. Between their gaining experience and my ontinued experiments, I'm sure we can eventually hatch some little baby discs ^^
I also bought a young male long-nosed angelfish at a pet store a little while back. The long-nosed angelfish, Pterophyllum dumerilii, is an entirely different species than the typical, commercially bred angels (which are hybrid Pt. scalare), and is typically imported only on rare occasions - and only a handful of people breed them. Naturally, I had to have him for myself, rather than let some bum with no idea what they were doing take him home to their community aquarium and kill him in a month.
That said, here are some recent photos of the fishies:
The new couple - note the size of the young female (black) compared to a mature, dominant male angel like Shuu-kun (grey) - bulk-wise, he's probably four times her size.
The new Pterophyllum dumerilii. He won't sit still long enough to get a good photo!
The female discus, Nejibana ("Neji"), a cobalt (solid blue) from the Stendker discus hatchery. Ths is not a flattering photo of her - she's much more intensely blue and irridescent in person.
Neji's husband, Itegumo ("Ite"), fanning their clutch of eggs. He's kind of dark because he's wary of the camera - they get very defensive when they think their babies might be in danger.
Sorry all these photos are so yucky - I really need to clean the aquarium glass one of these days! The tea color of the water can;t be helped, though - it's a result of all the peat and driftwood in the tanks leeching tannins into the water. It softens and tempers the water quality to more closely match the natural Amazon blackwater habitat of the fish.
Other than the fish stuff, I didn't do much today... tomorrow, though, I might go hike up around the Aspetuck land trust ad see if there's anything worth taking pictures of. But I only intend to go out there if it gets several degrees over freezing... don't particularly want to suffer frostbite for photography's sake. Also, if I'm feeling particularly motivated, I might drive down the road to the reservoir and take a picture of that - I posted a photo of it in the summer on deviantART, and sidh was wondering what it looked like right now. Maybe the swans there will be feeling cooperative and let me take a few pictures of them, too. Who knows?
I feel kinda hungry now, so I think I'll go forage for food. ^^' I think there's some leftover pizza from last night that I can warm up...