Blog moved

Hello everyone, sorry I haven’t posted in a while. I’ve been working on updating my website and installing wordpress, and now I have my new site design and a new blog. My new blog web address is: https://silvercrossfox.com/blogs/news

I’ve moved most of the past post there… however, I’ll still get traffic coming here. So, if you’d like to follow me there, you can still get updated when I post new content.

I plan to redirect this site before deleting it for a year or so until traffic comes new my new blog. Thank you everyone who have followed me. Below is an example of what you can expect from me in the future!

Chinese New Year 2015!

The idea came to me to create this piece when I thought about how the aoudad (barbary sheep) where I work is a “golden” color and how it would go well with a Chinese theme (red, gold, white and black). It is now the year of the sheep or ram, and the aoudad is certainly that.

So, Happy Chinese New Year 2015, Year of the Sheep!

Welcoming 2015

First of all, I must apologize to everyone following my blog hoping to see new content. I’ve been working on updating my website and migrating my blog to it, and I was going to post an update before that, but time has gotten away from me and I haven’t done that yet.

I plan to update this blog going into the new year until I have my new website up and running, as I don’t know when that will be, hopefully soon.

To welcome the new year, I will start by sharing some artwork I created in 2014 (last month or so). One reason I didn’t keep up with posting is that I did not create much artwork to share this last year, besides what I created for work, but this last month I decided to give a good friend and nephew t-shirts with my artwork on them for Christmas. I’ve been considering creating and selling t-shirts and other products with my artwork, and this was a test run (plus a personalized gift).

This first one was for my nephew of his kitty, Monkey! He loves his kitty, and getting a shirt with his kitty was a pleasant surprise! He is currently 8 years old. He wore it on Christmas day! 🙂

This artwork of an ocelot was created for my friend. They love ocelots and cats in general. The following artwork was a second one for them as well. I mostly wanted to test out vector-based artwork on a t-shirt.

These all turned out well, and they were all on dark shirts. Again, my apologies for not updating this blog for quite some time. I will make a post when my website is fully updated.

Giraffe Day

Since it is Earth Day… or at least the end of the day, I thought I’d share some photos. These photos are of a project I did at work. Back in December I painted a full-sized (about the height of a baby) giraffe carved out of wood. This was for our Twiga of Life and Hope (Twiga meaning giraffe and Swahili) where we had the idea of making the giraffe our “Christmas Tree” so to speak. For the full story and final look, you can check out the webpage. That idea worked, but not quite how we originally planned, as the little giraffe did not get incorporated. Since I did all that work of painting the giraffe we wanted to use it again. Since June 21st is going to be the first World Giraffe Day we decided to incorporate the giraffe into our activities for that day. We still haven’t quite figured out how, but for more information on that, you can check out the webpage. Daniel Patchin carved out the outline I created for him.

He did a really good job. This project would not have been possible with out a talent like his to carve out props. The following images are of the painting in progress and the final version.


Hope you enjoyed viewing these. It was a lot of fun to paint, and did not take that long. The color of the wood was very helpful. And, for a bonus image, below is a picture of our new Masai Giraffe baby boy Phoenix only 4 hours old. He was born on April 14th, 2014

My apologies for the lack of post. I should have some more post in the near future. At least, I have several more stories I can share.

Cheetah and Zebra Art

I know it has been a while since my last posted… I’ve been busy with work and school. So, I haven’t had time to work on my artwork. But, I do have some recent artwork to share with you!

Above are some recent Adobe Illustrator illustrations. These are for a work project. So, that’s how I’ve had an opportunity to work on artwork.

Also, I’m planning on starting several series. One of Asian animals, one of dog breeds, and one of the Order Carnivora. Stay Tuned!

Giraffe, Wildebeest and Impala Calf Photos at Safari West

First off, sorry for the lack of post recently, I plan to add more post now and into the future. And, not just animal photos, but art, as this is primarily an art blog. But, as an animal/wildlife artist, I take as many photos of animals as I can which can be used as reference for my artwork.

At Safari West, we’ve had many animals births this season, including the two giraffes, wildebeest, impala, plus many more. I have enjoyed photographing these animals, and following the development of the two giraffes. If interested, you can see photos of them on Safari West’s facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/SafariWest

Above is Ringo (left) and Luca roughhousing as young giraffes do. They were fairly rambunctious and I was lucky to capture this moment. Luckily I can see when they are looking like they will do something, as they often just stand (or sit) around not doing much. I think Luca (who is a few weeks older) is being a bit of a bully here, showing off that he is bigger and can stand taller than Ringo.

Ringo is on the left nursing while Luca looks on. Luca is in the process of being weaned and Ringo’s mom is starting to be less patient with Ringo’s nursing. A hard time for any young mammal… Luca might just be a bit jealous that Ringo gets to still nurse.

The above two pictures are of a impala calf trying to nurse from a wildebeest calf. The animal behind the two (white) is a dama gazelle. The wildebeest and impala are typically in another enclosure, and orphan animals tend to be in the lower giraffe enclosure. There are several impalas and just the one wildebeest. It seems that this little impala is seeing the wildebeest calf as an adopted mother, even though the wildebeest cannot produce milk… I think it is comfort nursing. I do not know exactly why they are not with their herds, but I suspect they needed to be moved for their protection, either their mother’s were not caring for them or one of the males was being too aggressive. At least they have each other!

The next post will have artwork, and will not take over a month to post. Again, sorry for the delay in post.

Cross Fox Scratchboard sketch

I’ve recently got some new scratchboards and scratchboard tools. Makes me very happy. I decided to test the new tools on a little sample I got from Riley Street art store here in Santa Rosa, California on an event day. The man at the booth was nice enough to give me the sample :).

Since the cross fox sketch is so small, I ended up finishing the drawing in a more graphical style. The tools will work better on larger subjects. The nice thing, I can actually make larger illustrations without killing my wrist in the process. Love the steel brush. Really nice for fur texture.

Above is the same cross fox scratchboard but colorized in Photoshop. If you enjoy my artwork, why not check out more on my website: silvercrossfox.com!

Ring-tailed Lemur

I’ve been busy working on several art pieces, so more artwork will be added soon. In the meantime enjoy a few photos I took of the ring-tailed lemurs at Safari West.

Thank you for your patience!

 

Serval Cat and Coatimundi

I’m glad I went into work yesterday (Friday, June 7th)… as I have been off Friday and Saturday’s recently, this last week I went in Friday as I had Thursday off. I’m glad because we had some animal visitors. Another facility that we have a good relationship with (and where some of our baby servals and fennec foxes now live) brought a young serval and baby coaitmundi (coati for short) for the owner birthday surprise. These two visited us first in the offices, which was a nice treat. We got to be up close and personal with them. We held the coati and were able to pet the serval. Below are two drawings/sketches that I did of both of them.

The serval has a very long neck, legs and large ears.

The coatimundi is a relative of the raccoon. They have a long snout and sharp claws to hunt down insects, crawfish and the like. This little guy was very cute and loved my burts bees lip gloss.

Here is a photo of this beautiful serval cat. 🙂