Some people have expressed an interest in seeing "messenger" available as a print. I am currently working with an outside printing company so I can have more control over the final output. They do an outstanding job, I am VERY pleased with the quality, so if anyone is interested in purchasing a print of "messenger", or anything else in my gallery, just drop me a note

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Who loves beautiful men? Come on, I know SOME of you do so check out this blog of justbeautifulmen [link] . The October 25 post features some of my work along with the wonderful work of fellow deviant Robert-James [link] . Discretion is advised for younger viewers - but the whole site is chock full of gorgeous photos, poses, and faces for your inspiration

The other day I heard a familiar sound - my 4 year old howling and crying in frustration. I went to see what was bothering him, and he told me "It won't come out right! I'm trying to draw a cube and IT WON'T COME OUT RIGHT!" And he flung the pencil across the room.

We had shown him the old 3d-cube-in-perspective recently, and he was trying to copy it, but his 4 year old brain was not grasping the rules of perspective. Heck, I have enough trouble with them myself sometimes I wanted to tell him "Baby, just wait until you try to draw a human limb with extreme foreshortening, talk about frustrating" but I just sat down and tried to help.

One thing's for sure, though - the kid can draw. It's scary how good he is for his age. He has an uncanny ability to look at something and distill it down to its most important parts, even if he's not sure quite what he's seeing. I think he's going to be a far better artist than either of his parents.

When I was growing up, no one in my family was into art. I know plenty of others like me, children of non-artists, who end up drawing, painting, designing, whatever. Of course artistic ability also seems inherited sometimes, as I know artists whose mothers or fathers were also artists. In the Renaissance the Brueghel and Tiepolo families are great examples of some serious-ass artistic genes being distributed.

Yes, getting any good at art is the product of a lot of practice and hard work. But I don't think anyone can deny that some people come into the game with an advantage - they have the "art gene". But what would the "art gene" be? Is it something that controls how our brain sees spatial relationships? Perceives color? Some kind of fine motor control? Where do intangibles like creativity and imagination come into it, and is it possible that these things are encoded in our DNA?

Just some things I'm thinking about as I watch my son try again to draw that damn cube...

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If you haven't done so yet, check out the winners of JunkbyJen's Think Pink IV Contest [link] , they all did a wonderful job and deserve some love!

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Fall = busy = less time for painting for me, but I have one in a cold weather theme I'm working on, hopefully some time in the next few weeks he'll make an appearance

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Del

The first day of fall was last week, but it's only been in the past few days that we've started feeling it around here. And what a relief it is! Goodbye hot, sticky Southern summer filled with giant bugs, hello my favorite season of the year!

And many thanks for all the responses to my DD on "messenger" [link] yesterday! When I was working on it I was thinking it was a rather strange painting with limited appeal, but it's turned out to be my most popular deviation to date. Lots of interesting comments people have made, ranging from renaissance art to the gender and theology of angels . Thank you all very much, and I will try and get them over the next few days!

Have any of you subscribed members checked out the DA Portfolio feature? I have to say, I'm very impressed and quite happy with it! As I've mentioned before, I've been wanting to get an art website up for some time now. However, I have many excuses, most dealing with my own laziness and lack of willingness to learn a new piece of software to get it up and going. Happily, the DA portfolio setup is incredibly simple and easy, and I got something working and online in about 10 minutes. You can set it up with images directly from your DA account, or upload new ones. You can have multiple portfolios geared towards different clients. I could go on and on, but if you haven't checked it out yet, do!

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Hi to all my new watchers, and thanks so much for the recent faves and such! The current painting I'm working on is going to take me awhile to finish, so I'm not going to have anything new for a bit, though I may post some things to my scraps folder.

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Saw this article the other day, "20 Stunning & Surreal Illustrations of Male Characters". One of them was my October, which was cool to see. Lots of amazing illustrations were included, some I'd seen before, others new to me, a nice variety of different male faces both young and old. The link:

[link]

And since the author provides credits and links, I have absolutely no problem with it.

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OK, spider season is officially upon us here, in particular, writer spider season. These spiders both horrify and fascinate me. There's something almost alien about them, their vivid markings and super shiny slickness... And they get to some seriously big-ass proportions in my neck of the woods. Here's one of the biggest I've seen, taken outside a local restaurant after lunch (if it would have been before lunch I think I'd have lost my appetite). Arachnaphobes beware!

[link]

Looking VERY much forward to fall

- Del

It's been awhile since I've updated this journal, so here's what's new -

Just found out my work is in the reader FXpose section of the August issue of ImagineFX (p. 19). It's not for sale yet in the US (a co-worker with a subscription brought it in to show me ) but may be in Europe already? Looks like I'll be hitting Borders in a few weeks!

Other than that, not much else... been working lots (lighting 3d stuff, which I love doing) and haven't had much time for my painting, though I do have something new in the works, we'll see how it turns out.

It's already super hot and sticky here and will soon been the time of giant spiders... oh, I'm ready for fall!