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HOULY1970 — We Three Kings
Published: 2007-08-06 13:12:40 +0000 UTC; Views: 1156; Favourites: 26; Downloads: 14
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10" x 8" Oil on MasoniteRelated content
Comments: 56
Tu trouve ? C'est faite plus dans une style d'illustration.
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How wonderful rams you have got there. They are so beautiful animals, and you definitely did then justice. Actually, they are among my favourite animals. (:
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Thanks Ingrid, It turned out pretty closely to how I pictured them in my head. Some of my favourite animals as well.
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Beautiful!
I am glad to see wildlife paintings here in dA.
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Well we have to fill our niche haha
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Beautiful! I love the composition and the amount of character in these faces -- the ram on the far left is so aristocratic. They're so cool. Remind me of Ed Aldrich, especially the warm and cool balance of sky and golden grass. The pale cold sky gives me a feeling of chill autumn temperature, and the same bluish shimmer in fur highlights is awesome, the gold warms it up and keeps it from wandering off into snow colours. Beautiful.
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Thanks Robert.
The style is a bit more slanted towards the works of Bob Kuhn, Ken Carlson, and Carl Rungius.
Ed's is way more detailed than my work.
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True. I know this is a conscious decision of yours and that you get more detailed in your graphite drawing... but sometimes you do get detailed in painting as well. What I thought was similar was the bold treatment of meadow, the composition and some liveliness, all the character in those animals!
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Haha that's cool Robert. Any comparison to Ed Aldrich is truly a great compliment.
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It's true. Actually, Ed Aldrich reminded me of you, and that's one of the reasons I bought his book.
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That's so neat !!!
By the way Robert. I read the first part of Raven Dance that they allowed me to on the site you had linked to your journal. It was awesome. I want to buy it, BUT !!!! I want it autographed by the Author .. haha
Sooooooo Now I'm wondering what will be the best way for me to do that. I guess the easiest way would be for me to order it on Amazon.ca and then send it to you to sign and send back .... but first I wanted to check with you to see if they let you order it yourself as cost so that I can buy it directly from you, so that you get all the profits and not just a cut. Let me know okay ?
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Wow, thank you! I just sent you two notes on it. One is long and rambly involving many other things including the money I owe you on The Kill, Archaeopteryx and ACEO Lion. I was a bit confused because I wasn't sure I could spare the money to do the order myself because I was saving up to pay you... and then those two facts collided and I laughed at myself.
It's fastest if I order it, sign it and send it to you in Canada rather than from Amazon to Canada to me to Canada, it cuts an entire leg of the book's trip, so I'll do it that way. I checked on iUniverse.com and they don't let me buy at cost, they give Author Discounts that are fairly substantial but mostly if you're buying a crate of your book to go resell at cover price. For one to five copies it's 30% -- the difference is a bit over $2 past my royalty for any order direct from iUniverse.com. I almost suggested you order through Amazon to improve my Amazon standings, but those are so miniscule anyway. I haven't sold copies in a while, they're not paying out again anytime soon.
I'll have to do something really fun with the signature this time, I usually do. You'll see when you get it.
The site is supposed to let you read the entire text, not just the first part! I had it set up that way so that people who liked the book could then order a print copy. I would have liked to set it up as a free download and think I'd have sold a lot more copies if it was available as a free download. But if I pulled it from iUniverse and went to Lulu.com I would have to do a new cover on it, so I haven't bothered to -- yet. Eh, if I do, this edition will be a collectible. ~kitten42 has also suggested to me that I edit it again now that I've written 30 other books and gotten more skilled, then submit it to pro publishers as two volumes.
When you read the whole book you'll find the chapter that reads like the end of Volume 1 and would be a complete book in itself, followed immediately by a decent opening chapter of a second book. I wrote two books and thought I only had one back when I first did it. It was neat, and I loved it, but I know my pacing a little better now. So it's really a two-for-one in one volume. It's not hard at all to tell where volume one ends when you get to that chapter, seriously. lol
I like the current cover but iUniverse.com has copyright to that cover design, which came about with much wrangling with their art department. The first cover they sent me was ludicrous -- soft blue-green overlapping clip art designs with a blond baby-faced boy vampire with a single chrome fang overlaid with a flying white dove? Dovedance? It looked like a cover for a paranormal romance with a blond vampire.
I'll go ahead and order it as soon as I hear back on my notes. Purr thank you! I am still proud of that book, it was my first serious novel, my first finished serious novel, and the dang thing took me decades to write because of that. I got the idea when I was sixteen in a series of connected serial dreams in which I was different characters in each dream... and when I told them to my best friend, she said it'd make a good novel. I wrote out all the dreams and put them together and then lost that draft. The idea never left me and I wrote it from scratch about forty times till I had a manuscript too big to get disgusted with and throw away. I had such a love-hate relationship with that book till it was finished that it was hilarious -- but it's the literal masterpiece of my life. The one that before it, I could not do the novelwriting thing, and after that, I could.
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haha that's awesome Robert.
I replied to the notes.
I think it's perfect the way they only let us read a bit of it like that .. just enough to draw us in and want more. then slam the cover on our grubby fingers ... It makes us want to buy it.
these days it's too easy for some tightwad to just print off the whole novel for free and you get nothing. You deserve to be paid for your work Robert. It's your baby and you should be enjoying money for all the work that you put into it.
I can't wait to see what you write in it. I'm sure that it'll be pretty cool, although just having you write something simple like " To my friend John. Enjoy, Robert " would be fine ...haha Don't get me wrong though. I'm sure you'll do something way cooler than that.
I wish that you had more books in print. I'd love to read more of your work.
Once I've read Raven Dance I'll pimp your book out to some of my friends as well. It'll get you some more sales.
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Well, if it doesn't bother you, then I'm okay with it. But I wish they'd told me they were only putting an excerpt because for years I've been telling people they can read it free at the More Information link. A science fiction writer at Tor offered the entire text of his book free at a download link, gave away 10,000 copies on the first day -- and wound up selling out his first printing to people who liked it and wanted to own it.
It'll be something cool and I'll come up with the signature note on the moment. I make those up on the spot for anyone that I know, it's only simple if I don't know the person.
I've finished the underpainting for Grandmama at Tathra now, and it seems a lot closer to done -- now that that's in, I can see that doing the colored pencil won't take forever and a day. I'm going to have fun with it. I may have to use multiple sets of colored pencils to get the colors right and create some burnished mixtures of color, but it's still going to be a lot of fun.
If you join [link] I have another book, a shorter one, up for critique in its own forum in the hidden members-only review forums. Also The Hunt is up in its own members-only critique forum. These are unedited, but any comments on them would be appreciated and if you find any typos or unchanged name-changes or any mistakes I will be profoundly grateful, as these may be going out to sell pretty soon. The Hunt is really only short its cover letter and short synopsis, while The Emerald Sword is raw and really open to critique. My rough drafts aren't too unreadable, so if you want more, join SFFmuse (the software will probably collapse that to "link" but the link is to SFFmuse.) Readers are very welcome there, the other writers who are members adore it if a reader comments on their stories or books and makes constructive suggestions.
I've got a lot of Pleistocene wildlife in The Hunt, but I'm hoping the next time I do a wildlife book it'll be all wildlife with an animal protagonist. I have been getting the writing itch again too. Today while I was looking for the rubber cement remover, I found the USB key that has some of my old files in it -- I didn't update the key with the latest novels I did, but it has all of my older material if it hasn't degraded -- so I'm going to plug it in and see what I have in the "to be edited" pile. It should keep me busy for a good long time!
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I joined Robert. I'll get around to reading your other work over there before too long.
Hell, maybe eventually I'll even write a few short stories of my own. Who knows ?
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Oh cool! I would love to read them. Thank you!
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They do look quite regal with those poses, looking down on us while they're resting and undisturbed by our presence. 
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Great painting, John, and a very appropriate title. Those guys really do have an air of majesty about them.
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Yeah I thought that they looked pretty regal and haughty. There were four rams actually in the reference photo that I was looking at, but I left one out to make it fit the title.
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Love detail. I love the title! These three really do look like kings crowned in horns. They are very majestic. This is a beautiful, serene picture. It's just an ordinary day, keeping watch over their lands, making sure nothing is amiss. Beautiful.
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Thanks for the great comment.
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Thanks Linda.
The reference that I used had four sheep ... So I took one out to suit the title that I had for it in my head.
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Thanks Jen,
I'm happy that you're easily amazed .. haha
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Hardly!
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Great work..Never worked on masonite before..Whats the texture like...A few of my favourite fantasy artists work on it.
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Thanks Lee,
Well let's see ... I've never worked on it before either. The two duck paintings and this one are the first ones that I've painted on it with.
I've painted on the smooth side, the back's textured a bit like canvas with a tooth that'd hold thicker paint more readily. I didn't prime it, so the board absorbed some of the first layer of paint. I had to go over it building up layer after layer to acheive the look I wanted to with it. The paint dries much faster like this, although I was using a fine detail medium to thin all of my paint since thicker paint that I normally paint with wouldn't stick to the glassy smooth surface. Most of the time the next day the paint would be drie enough to add the next layer. I used a lot of thin glazes with the mallard hen painting. Not so much with this one. I had to go over the sky three times with this one to not see the brown of the board showing through.
Now I've primed a larger board that's finally ready for me to start painting on. I'll let you know how that goes. My plan is to draw what I'm painting in high detail then lay a wash of the main background color down and slowly build up the detail with very thin washes. I doubt that it'll dry as fast this time with the board covered with a primer, so it's basically an experiment. If it doesn't work then I'll try it again with an unprimed board.
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That's excellent ... I was born in the year of the dog ... not so exciting .. haha
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What do you mean not so exciting?! I love dogs. They're so adorable... I don't think I'll ever tire of one, especially the bigger dogs. Love dogs. Ha.. My mom's born in year of the dog. I'm rambling, aren't I? I'm going to shut up now..
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Haha you're sweet.
Yeah I like big dogs as well ... I currently have an 85 pound bulldog, but he's getting pretty old. I'm not sure what my next dog will be. I like mastiffs ... and have always said that one day I'd have a huge shaggy Irish wolfhound, but finding a breeder has proven difficult ... and now I'm rambling ... So yeah .. I guess dogs are cool .. haha
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Haha... 
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Yes You're right Dogs are great.
Better than most people that I know. You're very wise.
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Hahahaha..... Me? Wise? Are you kidding me? Aw.. It's too bad the majority of the people you know don't even measure up to a dog [in your eyes]. Haha.. I love dogs so much, I don't think a human could ever measure up to a dog. Silly me, I know. 
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Thanks for the well wishes. I don't mind if there are people that don't measure up .. I can easily avoid them. haha
Take care
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Haha... I see. I'll take care of my friends as best I can.
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