Beach - video

 

waves or clouds

This started out as a semi-abstract landscape + sky painting, but I then I looked at it upside-down and decided I liked the clouds better as waves. 

 

 

My Love, We Are One

This was my first attempt to use wax resist to create the underwater sunlight effect. I went a bit overboard and wasn't happy with the overall result, but this was also my very first orca painting and I like how it came out, botched sunlight notwithstanding.

 

 

Semi-Abstract Trees Reflection

The Woman in Black

"She had a ghostly pallor and a dreadful expression."

 

RIP thananiveau.com

Does anyone even use websites any more? I didn't see the point in keeping mine, since I'm easy enough to find on Facebook. (Or "Meta" - whatever.) (Inexplicably, googling my name brings up Twitter first, and I haven't posted there in years.)

I realised I could find much better uses for the money it cost to maintain the site, so I let it lapse.

RIP thananiveau.com and hello broken links in all those old articles that link to it!

Floating trees

 

Gracie and her calf

Whale Shark

I haven't been able to do any painting for a few weeks so I'm a bit rusty. But I quite like this whale shark - from an "easy" tutorial by Emily Olson Art.

 

 

Dolphin refracted - video

 

Dolphin refracted

 

Meadow with Green Gold tree

 

Empty pages

I have a new notebook. Actually two. One is a 5-subject one like the kind I used to get when I was little. Blank paper of any description was always a favourite gift. And writers love notebooks. They offer so much potential, so much possibility. All that blank space to fill! We hoard them, cherish them. Every writer you know has a few of them squirreled away, waiting for a story that's worthy enough.

My second new notebook has dinosaurs on it and unruled pages. (Those are bloody hard to find!) It's for world-building.

Yes, I'm inching back towards the page again, to the written word. I have a story that's been swimming around inside me for many moons and I think I'm finally ready to start writing it.

I won't say anything more. I'm not really superstitious (except when I am!) but I'm going to play it safe and not even mention the working title. But I've mentioned the project, and that's a start. A commitment of sorts.

 

 

Desolation Trees

This is Desolation Trees, my second piece from Artifly. I was torn between it and Howling Glacier, and I couldn't decide. So I treated myself.

It feels like an evolution from Nothing Left, and in fact they make perfect companion pieces.

 

Nebulae

Wizard Nebula

 

Swan Nebula

Images from Dreams 1

One of the very best things about learning to draw is being able to illustrate my dreams. I dreamt about these friendly caterpillars that acted like puppies - tilting their heads and scampering up to be stroked. Their antennae quivered like happy tails. They had bright, intelligent eyes and wispy vines growing from their backs.

In another dream I was on a beach looking up at this floating hotel. It was a bit like Pandora from AVATAR. There was a weird sort of space elevator/kite string that could be used to bring the hotel down to the ground when necessary.

Howling Glacier

I've named this piece Howling Glacier, and it was generated by an AI artist just for me, based on my preference for weird pseudo-natural landscapes.

If Into the Woods represents Machen-esque cosmic awe, then this one is all Lovecraftian terror. It could be a scene from At the Mountains of Madness. Something inconceivably immense and threatening has been watching us since the dawn of time, waiting for a sign. Now the moment has come. It's punched a hole into our world. It's coming through.

Artifly claims he can "see my soul" through my selection of other AI paintings I like. He's very new and still finding his virtual feet, but he did a pretty good job with the first few offerings. I can't wait to be able to collaborate even more with the algorithm for a truly symbiotic experience of creation.

Galaxy and moon

 

They're watching us...

 

Into the Woods

Androids may dream of electric sheep, but perhaps AI artists dream of fantastical machines. Is this Valinor, the Undying Lands? Or some other place where pockets of magic grow like flowers? Are the figures emerging or returning to the earth? Perhaps it is all one. 

There's something distinctly Machen-esque about this piece by Sophtboi. I think the roses have begun to sing. 

Zoo sketches 1

The Last March of the Ents

"It is likely that we go to our doom. The last march of the Ents."

Butterflies

 

My god, it's full of stars!

 

Horses in a purple field

(From a stock photo by Callipso88 from Dreamstime.com)

Jupiter moth

 

Happy little trees

 Trees are one of my very favourite things to paint. 

I did this one for a friend:

Bats

 

Blood of the Earth

 

Windswept Trees

 

The Final Frontier

When I started learning to paint last year, one of the very first things I wanted to paint was Jupiter. And I was happy with my first attempt. Of course I had to do all the other planets next. (And yes, of course Pluto's in there!)

Later I did the moon, and a galaxy.

There's even a video of the galaxy painting. The original music was the opening theme to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, so imagine that if you want the full experience!

 

Fennec

 

Phoenix

 

Forensic Earth

"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids, are supposed, by some, to dream."

Perhaps even planets dream.

I've never collected any art before, but I'm starting to see how groups of paintings can have a theme. And I'm sensing one in the pieces that called to me. There's a strange sort of beauty in devastation, and maybe the fascination is unavoidable during this pandemic, itself merely a symptom of the greater looming catastrophe of climate change and the sixth mass extinction. I saw the term "doomdreaming" this morning, and couldn't help but relate.

Are we existing under conditions of absolute reality now? Or are we only just beginning to realise that there's a greater objective reality than our narrow perception suggests? Those of us who trust science and experts know the horror that awaits our species, but who are the sane ones? The ones who accept and face the grim truth? Or the ones who take the blue pill and keep their illusions?

Earth is our home, but now it is haunted. And just like Hill House, it wants us out.

Like trees in November

 

Travel journal styles

 

Haunted Mind

There's an unnerving beauty in the stark simplicity of Monochromix's style, as though the artist is unsure how much to reveal of the ghost in the machine.

But whose mind is haunted? Mine? Or the machine's?

 

"Silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone."