Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day! Here's a backyard scene featuring some favourites. 

-- Julia

Portfolio site

Mass Cat Card Post

Wow, it's been a while since I've blogged anything. These cat cards are piling up. This first one is a tribute to my Halifax trip. Georges (no apostrophe, I checked) Island and its lighthouse, the ferry that runs between Halifax and Dartmouth, a couple drinks the bf and I had at The Middle Spoon (mine had a sprig of rosemary that was charred slightly and smoking when it was served to me!)... And DidoCat is holding the chilled seafood platter we enjoyed at Salty's. 

And here are the three cards I made for my aunts, who were visiting from Japan!

 

  

I don't think this one was posted before -- The bf likes Lucio in Overwatch so I cosplayed DidoCat!

 

And here is this year's Valentine's card. The little hearts are gold leaf, which doesn't really show up here. 

 

 Dad's birthday card, featuring his new favourite La-z-Body. And little Candy Crush candies! I think he's 300+ levels in both Candy Crush Classic and Candy Crush Soda :P.

 

Mom's birthday card with three birds of her choice. Featuring her delicious Swiss roll cake.  

Whew! I must get better at posting.

-- Julia

Portfolio site

Father's Day 2016

Here's my Father's Day card this year! My dad requested these birds, as they are ones he and my mom have seen this past year. 

From top to bottom: Sandhill Crane, House Wren (who has settled into this nest box at the end of the yard!), Kentucky Warbler,  and American Avocet.

The House Wren would try and get these long twigs into the nest box. Sometimes he succeeded!

-- Julia

Portfolio site

Happy Birthday, Mom!

Here's Dido-cat perched on my mom's favourite birdwatching chair. It's always a huge struggle between those two for possession of the coveted seat! The yellow scarf is silk and was my mom's birthday gift from me :). In the background on the left is an immortal Xmas cactus and on the left is a dormant fig tree. Mom gets figs, too!

 

-- Julia

Portfolio site



Pet memorial stones

 My uncle's dog died suddenly and my mom wanted me to paint a memorial stone for him like ones I've done before. After I'd completed this stone (for Mei, who died in July)  my mom wanted me to restore Leo's stone, which looked like this:

I painted this just four years ago! Poor thing :(. It hadn't occurred to me to spray these things with a coat of clear acrylic. I got the idea while painting Mei's stone, so now I had to do the others!


Here's Leo's stone all nice and restored. After I took this photo I sprayed the stone with the clear acrylic so hopefully it'll last a little longer this time.

Here are all the cats that have come before! Poor Sparky died first, seven years old or so. She had heart problems. The unnamed cat we called Shiro, he was a feral cat that hung around. He had the loveliest colouring. We managed to capture a couple of his siblings while they were still young and take them to an animal shelter. While we like cats, huge feral colonies aren't that great if you love birdwatching! 

None of the other stones were as worn away as Leo's. But now with the protective coat on top, none of them will be!

-- Julia

Portfolio site

Father's Day and Mother's Day 2013

Finally getting around to posting these! Since my parents have become such keen birders I have no shortage of ideas for my painted cards. Dido-cat is always looking to make new friends :). 

 Other bird-related cards from this year:

-- Julia
Portfolio site

Happy 2nd Birthday to my Nephew!

Matthew loves his Duplo :). Must run in the family, because I'm a huge Lego fan!

-- Julia
Portfolio site

Owls for my Dad

This year's birthday card for my dad! Ever since my parents started birdwatching, deciding on the subject matter for these cards has gotten much easier -- I'd already run through all their hobbies! Plenty of birds left to paint :).

-- Julia

Portfolio site

Adventure Time Valentine's card

Here's the card I made for Valentine's this year! My boyfriend and I have recently discovered the magic that is Adventure Time. Such a fun, charming, hilarious show! We can both be super crusty and this show makes us happy :).

Good ol' Dido-cat is in the background, as usual.

Some of the other cards I've painted for family and friends.

-- Julia
Portfolio site

Happy Birthday Mom!

I painted a watercolour scene of some of the birds my mom has seen in the backyard. From left to right: cardinal (female), junco, cardinal (male), tree sparrow, song sparrow, red poll, and goldfinch. The red poll was a particularly interesting find (he's the one with the red cap!). Missing from the illustration is the Cooper's Hawk that's been hunting in our area. When he's around, these little birdies make themselves scarce!

The green thing at the top centre of the picture is the bottom part of a squirrel-proof bird feeder. The birds perch on the bar and eat out of the holes, but the perch won't take the weight of a squirrel and will make all the feeder holes close. Pretty ingenious! Of course, there's more than enough seed on the ground for the squirrels to feast -- but still, kinda cool.

I was very pleased that my mom could identify all the birds from my drawings. I'm no Audubon :P.

Here are some of the other cards I've made!

-- Julia
Portfolio site

Happy Birthday to my sister

Another Diablo 3 birthday card! And only a few weeks after my Dido-as-monk card. My sister plays a female wizard in Diablo 3 so I figured dressing Didocat up in wizard garb (including the lady wizard's signature ponytail) would be perfect. I chose the High Heavens level as the background for this card because I felt that the colours and elements would match well with the character. 

Diablo 3 is fun but I am super excited for World of Warcraft's next expansion. I'm a sucker for Asian themes and it looks like Blizzard is putting tons of content in for people who don't raid. The datamined Collector's Edition pet and mount don't look so hot to me but I'll be looking forward to the soundtrack and art book! Although it can be hard to listen to music that you constantly hear played in the background of  a game :P.

Here are the other cat watercolour cards I've posted.

There are a ton of cards I painted before I started my blog and they're all collected in this book I made.

Happy Birthday Emily!

-- Julia

Portfolio site

Diablo 3 Birthday Card featuring... Treasure Goblin!

Diablo 3 is a pretty fun game. Craig and I got it free with our one-year World of Warcraft subscriptions! He plays a monk and I play a demon hunter. So for Craig's birthday card this year I painted Dido-cat as his monk character! Here are the other watercolour cat cards I've blogged.

His favourite level/chapter/questing area is Bastion's Keep. It's a snowy area where your character helps defend the battlements from all sorts of horrific creatures. You have to light signal fires (as seen in the bottom left corner of the card), help raise catapaults, and kill dozens and dozens of demons. 

Any Diablo 3 player will be familiar with the Treasure Goblins. These poor dudes are occasionally found minding their own business in the game's randomly generated levels. Players must waylay these creatures and pound them into bloody chunks before they open up a portal into Treasureland and escape forever! Dido has got her paws on a Treasure Goblin and she's not about to let him go. I hope she remembers to collect his sweet loot and doesn't just bat him around for her amusement!

My demon hunter recently learned an ability I like to call Treasure Ferrets. It's a pair of adorable pets that scurry around and collect the gold that sometimes falls off of dead monsters. They also increase the amount of gold found on monsters by 10%. But mostly, they are cuuuuuuute!

This is the second game-related card I've made for him. The first is this Marvel vs. Capcom one I did for Valentine's last year:

-- Julia

Portfolio site

Father's Day 2012 card

This year is the Calgary Stampede Centennial, so I decided to paint my dad a Father's Day card to celebrate that. I painted Dido on a chuck wagon with the Saddledome and Calgary tower in the background! This year's Mother's Day card featured a chinese finger trap-looking bridge in Calgary and last year's Craig birthday card also included the Saddledome and Calgary Tower, with some rolling hills and distant mountains for good measure.

Here's a link to the other cat cards I've posted, and here's the book I self-published which boasts eight years worth of even more of them!

-- Julia
Portfolio site

Mother's Day card

Happy Mother's Day to my mom! Here's the card I painted. The weird tube that looks like a Chinese finger trap is a bridge in Calgary. Near this bridge were this pair of ducks that my mom told me later were American Wigeons (male and female). And of course we have Dido-cat holding some tulips and wearing a pretty bow!

I'm growing rather fond of ducks. They are easier to spot than birds that hide in trees and are often such lovely colours. Here are the other two duck-themed cards I've painted so far. And a duck-themed illustration, published in the National Post!

--Julia

portfolio

Appa and Momo-Dido

Avatar: The Last Airbender is a towering achievement in animated television. Don't think of the live-action movie or even the James Cameron 3D 3-hour hardware demo -- Grab the animated tv series now! It's available on Netflix (even the emaciated version of Netflix we get up here in Canada) so if you have to, try Netflix for its free trial period and watch all the episodes and then cancel Netflix. The show is just that good.

Sure, you may think it looks like a typical kiddie cartoon; one of those anime that doesn't quite look like anime with horrendous voice acting and worse writing. Give it a chance! The fact that a kids' show that is this complex and nuanced yet accessible got made is simply incredible. 

A sequel series is coming this April and I can hardly wait. The Legend of Korra! Here's a link to the trailer on YouTube, although I must say I didn't watch it because I already know I'm going to watch the heck out of this show. I did the same thing with the Harry Potter movies. I knew I was going to see them in the theatre, so why bother with trailers that'll show the coolest scenes? Save it!  

This is a card I made for my boyfriend, with a mini-Appa (the larger horned thing), Dido-as-Momo (cat + flying lemur) and a turtle duck to round it all out. Because turtle ducks are the cutest hybrid animals ever.

Happy First Birthday to My Nephew!

January to March is a busy time for cat-card-painting. My mom's birthday, my dad's birthday, Matthew's (the aforementioned nephew's) birthday, Valentine's, and my first-date anniversary with my boyfriend. Lots of cards and lots of Dido (the kitty who features in these things)!

Hard to believe Matthew is already a year old and walking. Happy Birthday, Matty!

Happy Birthday Dad (2012)!

Looks like I have ducks on the brain! Here's the birthday card I made for my dad. It just so happens to use some of the same kinds of ducks as the National Post piece I recently illustrated (here's a link to the sketches, on Monday I'll post the final). Left to right: Ruddy Duck, Hooded Merganser, Horned Grebe, and Mallard.

My parents have become enthusiastic birders these past couple of years, so I know that March and April are major birdwatching months. A lot of migratory birds return to Canada in the Spring so it's an exciting time to be out with binoculars and a scope!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! Here's the Neon Genesis Evangelion-themed card I made. It features Dido (the Minamata family cat, as Captain Misato Katsuragi) and Sachiel (the third "angel" in the anime series) making nice, with Tokyo-3 in the background and a heart-shaped AT field in the sky. The words are kinda a rough approximation of "Happy Valentine Day!". 

My boyfriend and I are big fans of Neon Genesis Evangelion -- he's got the entire tv series on dvd in the special metal case with the printed graphics. Excitingly, series creator Hideaki Anno is in the midst of revamping the series and reformatting it into a series of four movies, two of which have already been released and a third is being released this year. We've seen the first two parts so far and although I'll have to see all four to make any decent comparisons, I have to say Evangelion has never looked better. 

Yes, Neon Genesis Evangelion is a giant robot show, but its forays into mysticism and psychology and plain ol' weirdness set it apart in my mind. The angels (crazy alien-looking creatures that are bent on destroying humanity) are all incredibly imaginative and the art is second to none. Give it a shot, it's an anime classic!

I received four LEGO minifigures for Valentine's this year. I'm pretty psyched! I've gotten back into LEGO recently, after I reorganized my collection back home in Toronto. I got Hillside House for my birthday, a terrific 3-1 set; it comes with three sets of instructions so you can build three different house types!

The minifigs come in little plastic tear packages (not blind boxes!) so if you are very dedicated and not self-conscious you can stand at a display and try to feel for distinctive shapes inside the packages in hopes of getting a particular figure. I managed to pick out the artist minifig in series four -- my boyfriend went out on his own and felt up tons of series four packages and was able to get me the geisha minifig I wanted! How sweet is that?

And here's the Valentine's card I made last year, with our trusty Dido as Servbot from Marvel vs. Capcom 3. M.O.D.O.K. (Mobile Organism Designed Only for Killing) was a new and particularly distinctive addition to the roster!

Here's a link to the other cards I've posted.

I have a ton more, there are fifty-five in this book!

Happy Birthday, Mom!

My parents are into birdwatching in a pretty big way. They have nice binoculars, but sometimes ducks are shy. So they bought a sweet Vortex scope. It's got awesometastic optics, let me tell you. Of course I had to include their new pride and joy in my latest card!

One of their proudest sightings this year was of a King Eider (pictured in the above card on the right, the left-hand duck is a Green Teal), an absolutely gorgeous duck that is apparently pretty rare in these parts. I made them souvenir-looking t-shirts for xmas, working from one of their photos. 

The meticulous little label on the photo is my mom's handiwork. They have eight giant D-ring photo albums full of bird photos that are just as carefully catalogued. My dad takes the photos and prints them off on their Epson PictureMate, my mom does all the record-keeping and the making of the lunches (taken on particularly long excursions). They haven't gotten to the point of keeping canned food in the trunk of their car yet. We shall see what 2012 holds.

I remember reading fairy tales as a kid that made mention of eiderdown. What a shame it would be to stuff such magnificent plumage into a pillowcase! After some research I've found that Common Eiders are the ones that fill the duvets of fairy princesses (eiderdown can be harvested without harming the birds, as they line their nests with those soft feathers). Were King Eiders safe, I wonder? That would be a major case of duck class warfare, or at least appearance-based discrimination!

Merry Xmas, Happy New Year!

I hope everyone's having a great ol' holiday season! Here's the card I painted for my family. Christmas has come and gone but we're just gearing up for New Year's, which means... Mochi! Every year around this time my family and I make dozens of mochi that we eat fresh or freeze to be enjoyed later.

Mochi is a glutinous (sticky!) rice cake made of glutinous rice that is soaked overnight, cooked, and then pounded into a blob that is then formed into smaller blobs. Wikipedia has a very informative entry. 

In the olden days, wooden mallets were used to pound the cooked rice into submission. That is so olden days! We now have a magical machine with a magical name ("Mochitsukiki", aka Mochi-making gadget) that does the cooking and pounding for you!

Ta-dah!

Here's some very poor quality video I took with my iPhone to show the process. We strain the rice after soaking and dump it into this machine, where a single rotating widget in the middle mixes, mashes and pounds the rice until it is a uniform blob that spins and jumps around like its alive.

This clip shows the process a bit further along.

Dancing blog time! My sister and I found this to be the height of hilarity when we were kids. It's really kinda mesmerizing :P. 

How do you get a spinning molten blob of sticky rice out of a mochitsukiki? With a specially designed plastic bit with a hole at the bottom, that's how!

From there it's dumped onto a wooden block that's been liberally sprinkled with sweet rice flour to keep it from sticking. Then we form it into balls.

There are lots of ways to enjoy mochi. Easiest is to create a paste using some of sugar and soy sauce and dip and eat. They're also great in miso soup (any soup really -- today we had turkey soup with mochi in it! The turkey soup was made from xmas turkey bones) and with sweet red bean paste. 

Mochi has a simple taste, it's the texture that's the most fun. They are chewy and soft and stretchy. Zap one in the microwave and it'll inflate like a balloon, only to immediately flatten like the world's saddest souffle as soon as the power is cut. Mochi is fun!

My next post will probably be a showcase of the two t-shirts I designed as gifts this year. I coulda posted that first but I wanted to do something topical.

Happy 2012!