"Butterfly Taxi" - featuring cute Miss Mouse and anthropomorphic flowers too!

 

Here's my latest painting, "Butterfly Taxi." I had a lot of fun with it because not only does it feature the well-traveled and VERY cute Miss Mouse, it also has another (rather obscure) subcategory of anthropomorphic art, flower faces. Flower faces are a real challenge - their  faces must be "real" enough to be expressive and believeable, but at the same time the artwork must still be true to the flower being depicted. These three little ladies - Molly, Holly, and Dolly - are the Hollyhock sisters. They are, botanically speaking, double hollyhocks. In reality, they would have more ruffles, but then it would have been more difficult to integrate the faces. If you go to the Gallery at my Whimbletails™ website,  you'll see I've also done a flower face rose and sunflower. 

To visit my online store offering a large variety of great products, gifts, and collectibles featuring all my whimsical animal illustrations, please go to Adele's Cute Animal Art Shop.

And Now a Word From Our Sponsor...Adele from Whimbletails™

This my latest painting, called "Shrewy's Farm Stand." Shrewy is a becoming a popular character around the Whimbletails™ world! When he's not busy selling produce to his loyal customers like Mrs. Crow, he also operates the Pumpkin Cafe, dishing out such tasty treats as Pumpkin Soup, Pumpkin Bread, Pumpkin Pie, and faithfully subscribing to the credo, "waste not, want not," even the Pumpkin Seeds. See below! If you'd like to see the complete collection of my Whimbletails™ paintings, please go to my web site by clicking here.

                           

Tweet, Tweet! A VERY Cute Baby Bird Sculpture

Animal art doesn't have to be just paintings or illustrations! It can also include other forms of expression like this wonderfully creative bird's nest clay sculpture by the very talented 10-year-old, Dominique Reano of Santo Domingo and Cochiti Pueblos, New Mexico. Can you see why she won both a Youth Pottery Award and the Youth Smile Award at this year's Indian Market in Santa Fe? Birdie even seems to have a piece of shell stuck upon his little head. Cute, cute, cute!

To visit my online store featuring a large variety of great products, gifts, and collectibles featuring my own whimsical animal art, please go to Adele's Cute Animal Art Shop.

Flickr Group "Animals in Your Art"

Did you know that there's a Flickr group with more than 2600 members and 39,000 photos of artwork called "Animals in Your Art"? If you love animals or animal art, click here to see a huge variety of illustrations, photographs, paintings, and more, ranging from ultra-realism to fun cartoons, of all sorts of animals. I have a few of my own illustrations posted - here's just one, called "The Explorer's Club":

To visit my online store featuring a large variety of great products, gifts, and collectibles featuring my own whimsical animal art, please go to Adele's Cute Animal Art Shop.

Picture of the Day - (Angus Clifford) Racey Helps

A prolific artist and author of more than two dozen children's books, Racey Helps was also one of the Medici Society's most popular postcard artists. Like Beatrix Potter, Helps began his career by illustrating his own stories and mailing them off to a child - in this case, his own daughter, living away from home in the safer countryside during WWII. Help's work was discovered by a publisher while he worked as a hairdresser with his wife. Although he died in 1971, his descendants in Great Britain maintain a fabulous website devoted to Helps and his work, with an extensive biography, bibliography, and a ton of gorgeous reproductions of his illustrations. The URL is: http://www.raceyhelps.co.uk  Enjoy!

I've chosen this work called "The Astonished Angler" not only because it's a prime example of cute or dressed animal art, but from an artistic point of view, it's a smashing success - beautifully composed, with flowing lines all circling about the central point of action; employs a very effective color scheme, using primarily the three analogous colors of blue, green, and yellow; has accurate yet simplified botanical detail; and provides a smile just viewing it. What more could a picture offer?

Would you like to see my own whimsical animal art? Please visit my online store, Adele's Cute Animal Art Shop, featuring a large variety of great products, gifts, and collectibles featuring my own cute animal illustrations.

Lang Campbell - "Comic" style animal character art

There's two camps, or distinct styles, in animal character illustration. This first is naturalistic, like Beatrix Potter's. You may be aware that her first artistic efforts were in scientific illustration - her renderings of mushrooms, bugs, flowers, etc. are superb. When she began to illustrate her books, she never compromised her facility for naturalism. A frog may have been wearing a waistcoat, but he always remained an anatomically correct frog!

The second style is comic - usually line drawings, with flat colors; and exagerrated features with limited regard for anatomical accuracy. One of my favorite "comic" cute animal illustrators is Lang (Lansing) Campbell. I can't even look at his "Dinky Ducklings" without laughing! Are those guys too goofy or what? Here's two examples:

 

Lansing “Lang” Campbell was a 20th c. American illustrator and cartoonist best known for illustrating the Howard Garis cartoon series "Uncle Wiggily’s Adventures" (started 1910), later to become the basis for several dozen books featuring the beloved character. During the 1930's, Campbell also created a few strips and books of his own, including "Piggy Pigtail", "Paddy the Pup", "Dippy Doodlebug", "Bizzy Izzy Humbug", "The Dinky Ducklings", "Duck and Applesauce", "Dicky Bird’s Diary," "Merry Murphy" and more. After an active career in New York City, he retired to Boothbay Harbor, ME about 1950, where he spent the rest of his life. Exact dates of birth and death unkown.

My own animal character art? A cross between the two. A good deal of naturalism, especially in the botanical areas of the painting, but a bit of artistic license when it comes to rendering the animals - especially insects! I try not to stray too far...but they persist in coming out cute! See my painting "Best Buddies" below (take a close look at Fat Mr. Bee!)

To visit my online store featuring a large variety of great products, gifts, and collectibles featuring all my  whimsical animal art, please go to Adele's Cute Animal Art Shop.