I've got a number of newly completed works of art to share, most of them abstract watercolors, so I figured I'd start with, what else, an abstract watercolor. I called it "Watering the Lawn" because to me it combines abstract drops of water, blades of grass, sunshine, the idea of breezes, etc.



The painting is shown with a gold frame above, but both framed and unframed prints are available - click here for more information. The original is 14"x10" on Aquarelle Arches hot press 140 lb. watercolor block paper.

Thanks for looking, and stay tuned for more art. :-)

I know I should really be more consistent with my shop newsletters, but at least I get them out PERIODICALLY - LOL. You can click here to read the full shop newsletter, but the new parts I want to share here as well I'll post below (copied directly from the newsletter so it's that really excited 'newsletter' speak - *grin*)...

InfiniStitch™ Embroidered Hats, Shirts & Jackets:
Thanks to the development of a new kind of Embroidery called InfiniStitch™, Art of FoxVox can now offer many of our Celtic designs embroidered onto special products including a cap, black collared polo shirts, roomy buttoned denim shirts, and cool performance jackets! (The embroidered products are also a terrific alternative for when one of our Celtic t-shirts or sweatshirts is just a bit TOO casual.)

You can find our embroidered Celtic products by browsing our Celtic Designs #1 and Celtic Designs #2 - most of our round/circle knotwork and spiral designs are available on the new items!

Celtic Knotwork Ceramic Dog & Cat Bowls: Made out of a heavy, durable ceramic, these large and small Celtic pet bowls are great for both cats and dogs (and other furry friends too!) and will add a touch of class to their dinnertime.

Pet bowls are white ceramic and available with Celtic knotwork in blue, green, orange, pink, purple, red, turquoise, or gold. Click to browse all Celtic pet bowls.

Okay - end the newsletter bits. Actually the pet bowls would be fantastic as snack bowls for humans too - you can fill them with M&Ms, trail mix, chex mix, whatever, and there are no marks on the bottom that say it's for pets at all. ;-)

About a month ago, my friend Tom came over sporting new glasses. When I complimented him on them, he told me that he'd gotten them online for about $10. *shock* At first I thought he meant that they were like those reading glasses you can pick up in a drug store, but no, they were his prescription. When I asked how this was possible, having had glasses since I was a teenager and knowing how expensive they were, he pointed me to Glassy Eyes. (I won't summarize anything here - just go to the site and start clicking and reading.)

Needless to say, I was intrigued! Glasses with my prescription for under the usual hundreds of dollars? (I was probably even MORE intrigued since I don't have insurance to cover the expense of eyeglasses and don't have tons of money laying around at the moment.)

Since it had long been past time to get a new eyeglass prescription, I went to a local optometrist and for a $100 office visit I got a new prescription. Then I came back home and got online. Glassy Eyes links to a number of inexpensive eyeglass manufacturers, and after a bit of surfing, I decided to go with Zenni Optical for a few reasons. 1. They seemed to have a wide selection of frames. 2. I liked how they gave all the measurements for the frames (most of them do, really, but I liked their setup) including frame width and lens width and height and bridge width. 3. They seemed to have a good selection of the cheaper frames as well and 4. Zenni Optical was what my friend Tom had used with success for his own glasses.

Now, Tom's got a very weak prescription, so he didn't need any of the higher index lenses or anything fancy, which was why they only cost him about $10 plus shipping. I knew I'd need at least one higher level of index, which on their site is $19.99 extra. But I didn't need the X-tra strength prescription or bifocals either, so I didn't have to pay the extra charges for those either.

On their site, there are little question mark links next to technical parts that nicely explained the details in laymen's terms, and a page about frame sizing as well. The one thing I couldn't do, of course, was TRY ON any of the frames to see how they fit or how I looked in them. (True of anything you order off the internet, but I'd never done it with glasses before!) I measured the frame width of my current frames and compared it to the dimensions given and was able to figure out what was similar. I chose two frames, one full-rim in silver and a half-rim in gold, thinking that the gold would be my primary and the silver my backup. (I'd never had the option of having a second/backup pair before either, due to the expense!).

So I selected my frames, typed in my prescription (including my slight astigmatism) and pupillary distance, upgraded to a higher-index lens for $19.99 more, and the order came to $56.90 plus $4.95 shipping (for any number of glasses) for a grand total of $61.85.

They gave a delivery time of at least two weeks, and in two weeks plus one day (yesterday) they had arrived at our mailbox! They were in a padded envelope, and each pair of glasses was contained in a hard plastic case:



Each pair of glasses was wrapped in a soft lens cleaner cloth, tucked in a plastic eyeglass-size ziploc bag, and enclosed in the plastic case. After I tried on both glasses numerous times, let my eyes adjust to the new prescription, and checked myself out in the mirror a few times, I can say that I'm VERY happy with my purchasing decision! And here are the glasses - the silver full-rim ones first:



And the gold half-rim ones:



Now, the major CON to all of this is the not being able to try them on part. Both glasses I got fit nicely even though the frames were different sizes by a few millimeters, which I did on purpose to play the odds. They both look decent on me too, although the silver ones, being smaller and slightly narrower, don't tend to compliment my round, full face as nicely as the gold ones do (which are wider), but I was mostly planning them as a backup anyway. But you know what? For $30, I was willing to take that risk in the first place, which I never would have done if they'd cost hundreds of dollars. They also make sunglasses, which I've never really been able to have before either!

So, to sum up, this was a great experience for me and I'd definitely order again online. If you need new glasses, I highly recommend giving this a go. If it doesn't work out for whatever reason, you've lost very little money, and if it DOES work out, you get new glasses, maybe multiple pairs, and get to keep a lot more of your money in the process! John's planning on trying it now too!

Last week we had to say goodbye to our wonderful black labrador retriever, Pepper. When she was about four years old, we adopted her from a local family that was moving, and we've had the pleasure of her ridiculously happy energy for over nine years. We miss you Pepper!

Recently I tried out something a little different with my Celtic artwork. A sort of abstract black and white piece with all different kinds of spirals. I called it Celtic Clockwork because it reminded me of all the gears inside a clock. You can see the slightly different versions that I put on t-shirts, versus greeting cards, etc.:




I also have framed and unframed prints available through my gallery at Imagekind:



Hope you like it!

First it was the boar and boar piglets (see previous posts for video links), but then last night there was a coyote dodging around here, and this morning, a bobcat! I got a few quick photos - the coyote was elusive and the shot isn't great quality but there's the added bonus of getting a scrub (blue) jay in the shot as well, which I didn't notice until later. (The old bathtub in the field is actually in a cow pasture and is for the cattle - heh.)



The bobcat photo was much better - he was just sitting on the hillside watching us. Seems like he waited for me to snap a photo and then jogged away.



I'm pretty happy to draw the line at animal close encounters with that. I did actually see a mountain lion (cougar) here a number of years ago, but those are really big and I'm not so much interested in seeing one of those close enough to get a photo, even with my zoom lens.

Recently, a number of wild boar have been coming down the hillside to root around for food. Luckily they aren't the HUGE ones, just mid-size, and they scare away easily. But the other day when I was watching them, I saw this small rust streak under the boar and I realized there were boar piglets running around too! I wasn't too successful with getting good photos at first, but then yesterday, the whole mini-herd came down and started rooting around and eating the fallen walnuts under the black walnut tree by our house (on the OTHER side of the fence, I'm happy to say.) And I was able to get some reasonable videos of the action - big boars and little colorful piglets!

Keep in mind that these videos were taken through the window screen, so they aren't as sharp as they could be, and there's really no sound, but the piglets are so cute - heh. Also, most of the clips are under 45 seconds long. Click here to see the videos. Enjoy!

I had been shopping for some new casual shoes/sneakers, but found nothing that I liked, or was in my size or price range, even at the outlet mall - sigh. I'm also pretty picky about what I was looking for, in a mundane sort of way - something normal, but passably interesting, comfortable, and definitely no plastic colors or gold lame' - LOL. Then, John happened to mention that people at work often buy shoes online at Zappos, and that they had free shipping both ways. (I'm probably the last person in the online world to have heard of Zappos, but I'm so NOT a fashionista - LOL.) So I dove into their web site and after just a bit of clicking around I found just what I was looking for - a cool suede sneaker from a maker called Simple Shoes (See photo at right.)

Although the ones I bought weren't from their extreme-ecological line, they have a great philosophy and some wonderful casual shoes with a focus on recycling and sustainability - check them out! Also, although I opted for the free shipping, Zappos expedited my order and I got my shoes in no time. They're comfy, a perfect fit, and they don't make my feet look at big as they really are - quite a... ahem... feat! (sorry!)

I'm still playing with the idea of angles and lines through shapes, and ended up creating what I'm calling "Leaf Mosaic" - another colored pencil piece. (The original is done on dusty blue-green charcoal paper, so no 'white' showing through.)



I've got it in my Gallery at Imagekind, and you can click the image or click here for framed or unframed prints.

I also have versions of this design on t-shirts and gifts and such, as usual - heh. Some samples:

I bought a set of 48 Prismacolor colored pencils and am already quite along the way of wearing them down to nubs! :-) One of the first pieces of art I did with them was this really colorful work called "Cosmic Ribbons" - I think I tried out at least 75% of the colors for this one - heh. The original is 14x10 on watercolor paper.



(Click the image above for prints via Imagekind.)

I've also got Cosmic Ribbons on stuff in my shop, for example:




(Click any of those images to see all the 'stuff' - includes things like mini buttons and refrigerator magnets - turn your fridge into an art gallery - LOL!)

Just 36 hours ago this streambed was all dry and rocky!



And just 36 hours ago the locals could have easily driven even a low-ryder through this road that goes through the stream bed. At the moment though, I wouldn't even try it with a big jacked up truck:



In any case, we're very happy to be seeing the stream again (it didn't get this big at all during last year's rainy season - no big storms to speak of), so I thought I'd share these photos with you all today. Happy Rainy Sunday!!

We're having high winds here this morning. In fact, one of those tin roof panels flew off this morning, so John went up there to reattach it and nail the neighboring roof panels down more tightly as well:



We're also expecting some heavy rain the next few days (another reason to fix the roof right now!) Maybe the next few days of rain will get the stream flowing - that would be a welcome sight again!

I must have walked by this tree a thousand times, but it never struck me as wild or alive as it did the day I took this photo:



It was set between two huge old Live Oak trees, and maybe the contrast between their deep evergreen leaves and the dark naked branches that reach both up AND down was finally enough to wake me up. I called it the Witching Tree. Spooky, powerful, different, and lone.

I also caught another photo while out and about:



This is called Barely a Fence, for obvious reasons. It's more of a visual barrier than anything else, because if a cow (or a rabbit for that matter) so much as breathed on it, it looks like it would just disintegrate! Ahhh, rural decay.

[Click on a photo if you're interested in buying framed or unframed prints - you can also see larger versions after the clicks too.]

I've done a somewhat minor redesign on my weblog at foxvox.org (of which this is a mirror). So if you want to see, just click here - read the latest post there for more details. Happy New Year!!

Happy Holidays Everyone! I hope to post a little more frequently in the future, but just in case I don't get a chance this week, click here to see our online greeting card for all you guys, from John and me. (Make sure you have javascript enabled for the full effect.) And I hope 2008 is spectacular for each of you!

I have a few new photos up in my gallery, all pulled from local scenery. VERY local. Our backyard local - LOL.

The first one is "Lunar Hilltop" - I loved the way the moon was hanging over what seems like a bald spot on top of the tree-covered hill! I chose to do it in black and white because I thought the golden-orange of the hills here at sunset was actually a bit much. I like the way the black and white looks much better!



The second one is a triptych of photos of our bare walnut trees against a cold sky. I altered the blue sky tones for each crop in photoshop, and I liked how the grey frame completed the cold, bare, wintery look.



The third image is just kinda kooky. It's a picture of some metal letters hammered into one of the telephone poles here. I'm guessing it's for the phone company, but loved the 'half' added here to the numbering system. Plus it looked so rustic in black and white.



Prints are available by clicking on the images if you're interested, but in any case, thanks for looking, and Happy December!

The Temples of Damanhur are amazing cave creations secretly built into the Italian hillside, by a 57-year-old insurance broker. Click the link - you've GOT to see these photos!! Wouldn't it be amazing if this kind of passion and art was put into all modern architecture? Just wow. Reminds me of the amazing Wieliczka Salt Mines in Poland - once they'd mined out the salt they used the space to create gorgeous opulent rooms.

I just sent out a holiday newsletter for my Art of FoxVox Shop. The newsletter includes highlights of the new Celtic porcelain ornaments and Christmas (and Yule/Solstice) greeting and note cards sets, the Celtic & Funny t-shirts, sweatshirts and other cool products offered (we have new keepsake boxes this year - very nice - lined in white velvet!), as well as an excellent coupon discount code! To break the suspense (which I'm sure is keeping you on the edge of your seat), instead of me repeating everything I just wrote, just CLICK HERE to read the online version of the newsletter if you're interested.