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Welcome to my cyber digital artwork homepage!
Each drawing shown here is made on my computer - a Dell Inspiron Laptop (my baby). My artwork is drawn, one pixel
at a time, using either a pressure sensitve pad or a laser mouse. It is tedious but rewarding work.
I use MS Paint - yes its antiquated, but then I guess I'm dating myself. MS Paint is just so easy to use
that so long as I'm drawing and not doing any fancy manipulations, I find that Paint works just fine. I also use PSP
and Adobe Photoshop to add text. However, I do not use any filters, plugins, etc. What you see here is what I
drew pixel by pixel.
COPYRIGHT NOTIFICATION:
I hope that you enjoy my cyber digital art. However, please realize that all this artwork is copyright protected,
and I do not give my permission for it to be used anywhere, under any circumstances, including internet based personalized
stationary and tags, even if they are not made for commercial gain. I have worked hard to create these images
- countless hours of photography followed by endless hours of drawing at the computer. One artwork, A Gathering
of Gouldians, took me almost 1000 hours to complete - much more time than if I'd have just picked up a 3D paintbrush
and tubes of paint and painted it on a canvas.
Therefore, please respect my intellectual property. I will rigorously protect my intellectual property, and I will
prosecute anyone using it without my express written permission. Be forewarned that my husband is an intellectual property
attorney who deals with IP litigations/infringements worldwide, so I do have access to excellent in-house
counsel. Thank you.
Christine ACY Kumar - birdsnherbs
TweetHeart Aviaries
Would you like for me to draw your birds? Click me.
Click here to see my Doodles, Cartoons and Animations
| Penguins Together |
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| Penguin Mutation Zebras Together with King Penguin |
Artwork done for Huub Janssen, ironically completed the day he found out that he'd won the NZC (Dutch Zebra Club) Grand
Champion award with one of his male Penguin (Witborst) Zebra Finches.
Congratulations to Huub!
This one took me two weeks to do - I lost track of how many hours. The black on the King Penguin's face was particularly
challenging as I wanted it to look like black velvet. I think I achieved my goal.
My husband says he likes this one a lot but that you'd never see these two species of birds together. TRUE
- but then that is the beauty of art.
Completed October 5th, 2006. I really like this one. It's been floating around in my mind for about 3 years
now - nice to get it out.
| Blue & Gold Macaw, BC Zebra, OH Gouldian & Budgie |
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| This Logo was designed for a fellow aviculturist. Leaves are Purple Passion, Gynura aurantiaca |
In order to have a transparent background, this artwork was converted to a GIF, which resulted in the loss of some detail
and resolution. The version shown here is 50% of the original size.
This drawing took me about 2 weeks of 12 - 14 hour days to complete, including designing and drawing. This drawing
was completed 9-20-06. The leaves alone took almost thirty hours. They were extremely time consuming but
I think they came out really well.
I was a bit intimidated by the budgie's head stripes, but was very patient with them, doing one stripe at a
time and not rushing it. My patience paid off - the final detailed effect was well worth the effort.
The budgie head stripes are beautifully set off by the Black Cheeked Zebra's throat striping and the face striping of the
Macaw. The overall color scheme of this drawing ended up being primarily yellows/oranges and purples/blues
with the black and white striping - all of which makes for an extremely visually appealing design.
While I am very happy with the results of all the birds in this work, the budgie pleases me most. Plus
the Budgie reminds me of my maternal Grandmother, who we called 'Gram'. She always had a budgie. I enjoyed them
- but the little buggers really bit - as I found out at a young age when I stuck my finger through the cage bars. While
it was not as painful as the time her pony, Suzy, tried to bite my thumb off while feeding carrots to her, I guess that wicked
little budgie nip sort of traumatized me as I've never kept budgies. If you ask me about budgies, the first thing I'll
probably say is that they can really bite. LOL
This particular budgie would not be considered show quality. The standard has pushed budgerigars towards
poofy heads that look anything but natural (they look like their brains have grown 10x or they have a really bad perm).
I do like how the show budgies have nice big spotted feathers in front, but the poofy head is so detracting, in my opinion,
that I intentionally selected a budgie that had more normal appearing proportions.
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| SAP&PA Logo |
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| JPEG with more detail but does not have a transparent background |
Dutch Australian Grassfinch & Parrot Finch Special Club
(Speciaalclub Australische Prachtvinken & Papegaai Amadine)
A good friend of mine in the Nederlands asked me to make his finch club a logo. This particular bird
club focuses exclusively on Australian Grassfinches and Parrotfinches. Gouldians, Lonchurans and Zebras are excluded
from the Speciaalclub's charter.
I was asked to show at least one grassfinch and one parrotfinch, but the rest was up to me to design: which species
- which mutations - which colors. I tried to pick a representation of different colors and types, though
of course I could not possible show all the Estrildids from this region of the world. I also tried to pick some
of the species which are more popular and that members could see their own birds in the logo. I chose to the following
species (starting at 9 o'clock):
1) Yellow beaked Normal Shafttailed Finch
2) Pintailed Nonpareil Parrot Finch
3) Diamond Firetail
4) Owl Finch
5) Pied Red Throated Parrot Finch
6) Yellow Star Finch (center)
I chose to draw all males because in Aves, males are typically more colorful.
I used the Dutch national colors for the background. Their blue is more of a royal rather than the navy blue that
is used in the US. To be sure that I got the right color in there and also to prevent the image background from appearing
flat, I used a gradient for all three colors.
This artwork took me about 2 weeks. Figuring out how to make the background transparent took a few weeks
of tinkering around with different programs. While it can be done in PSP, I prefer to use Animation Shop. It's
just so much EASIER. I'm sure it can probably be done in Adobe, but I'll be darned if I could figure it out.
LOL
The lettering (Text on a Curve) is what took me forever - close to six months to procrastinate and then conquer.
I finally got it figured out in PSP7 and then my program version became corrupted somehow. So I had to go to PSPX
and try again. These two PSP versions are not very similar, and it took me several months to learn my way around
in PSPX. I've never used this program before - having done much of my graphics in Paint, Animation Shop and Adobe.
But I couldn't figure out how to do Text on a Curve in any of the others, so it required that I learn yet another new program.
What I won't go through for a friend. Oh well anyway, these are all techniques which are good to know.
The above logo is saved in JPEG format. This version is reduced 50% from the original. It still has very
high resolution. The problem with JPEG format is the white background, which I feel detracts from the shape of the image.
| SAP&PA Logo |
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| Gif - Transparent background but some loss of detail |
This version is in GIF format and as you can see, the background is transparent. However, the transparency
comes at a cost in detail and resolution. I still think it looks pretty good though....
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| Red Crested Cardinals of the Pantanal |
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| The Earth is as fragile as eggs in a nest. |
This work was revisited several times over a period of a year and a half before finally finishing it. I wanted
to have it completed for Earth Day 2005...
I owned half interest in these two birds for a brief while and they are still with a good friend of mine. They
are domestically bred (US breeder).
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| A Gathering of Gouldians |
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| Male Gouldians Congregate on a Tree Limb. Crayola comes in for a landing. |
A Gathering of Gouldians. There were two inspirations for this artwork:
1) AdRail was building a light rail in the Darwin area of Australia when the swamp bulldozer operator destroyed
prime gouldian habitat in not one but TWO separate locations. Since gouldians are endangered (the current wild population
is ~2500), I was incensed when I read of such corporate environmental stupidity. So this work is dedicated (tongue in
cheek) to AdRail and their Swamp BullDozer Operators, in case they forget what a wild gouldian looks like in 20 years..
2) The work is also a celebration of the life of Split2Blue, the only gouldian shown with a red face mask.
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| Bamboo Tryst |
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This work is dedicated to Saffron, my Yellow Breasted Pintail Cockbird. He's one of my favorite finches.
I just wish he'd do more than sing to his hen and actually build a nest and have some babies with her!
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| Beneath the Weeping Bottle Brushes |
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This work is dedicated to Frypan. He's the little guy on the right. I adored this owl finch, only to lose
him to twirling. The other owl was a HUGE cockbird named Pavarotti (for obvious reasons). I made this work when
I was extremely distraught over losing my tame pet blue capped cordon bleu, Cosette. I always thought I chose to draw
them facing away from me because my little girl had left me and would never return.
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| Coming Home - Blue Gum Trees |
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Meet Man O' War, a small but pugnacious normal gray zebra finch that was given to me by a friend. This is
perhaps one of my personal favorites - I love the movement in this work.
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| Blue Tit |
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A close up of the Blue Tit. This is part of a larger work.
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| Five in a row |
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| Red Throated Parrot Finch, Owl Finch, Zosterops, Bar Breasted Fire Finch and Blue Tit |
Part of an unfinished work.
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| Tiny Dancer |
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This is an emotional favorite of mine. I seldom look at this work since it brings tears to my eyes. It commemorates
two blue capped loves of my life, Pip (grass dancing) and his mate, Cosette (on the right). Pippy and Cozy were my pets
(I hand raised them from abandonment - perhaps 2 days old for Pippy and Cosette actually hatched in my hand). Tragically,
I lost both of them in two separate freak accidents far before their time.
Not a day goes by where I don't think of them and wish that I could have them back in my life for just a few moments
again. They were by far the most charming creatures I've ever known.
This was my very first attempt at drawing my finches on the computer.
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| Holiday Greetings - Finch Nicholas |
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| Stockings were hung from the tree limbs with care, in hopes that Finch Nicholas soon would be there. |
This was my whimsical holiday card for 2003.
Shown here are as Finch Nicholas is a noname zebra male (long since sold). The Finch Reindeer are Tweeter
and Tweeter's Brother. I still have Tweeter - he's fostering three gouldians as I write this (12/2006).
He's an awesome breeder but throws VERY SMALL birds. So I use him to foster now.
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For my Xmas 2004 card, I wanted to do something a bit different. I had this work going around in my head
for some time, and I just had to get it out and onto my LCD screen. This was my first attempt at drawing an animal other
than a bird. I think birds are infinitely easier to draw than koalas. LOL
The birds show here are (in the cage in my house) Yudhistera and Lorna Doone - in the nest. Yudhistera is really
a Normal Gray zebra, so I morphed him into a black cheek. Lorna Doone is a Gray Penguin, and I changed her into a Continental
CFW. Yudhistera and LD never breed well for me, but they are awesome foster parents.
The birds show in the Australia portion of the scene are Pollux (BC male) and his wife, Evie AKA Evolution, who is a
Continental CFW. Sadly, Pollux died suddenly in July 2005 and Evie died on Christmas day, 2005. :-( Evie
was the first Continental I ever bred - there are no words to express how much it pleased me to see her and or to express
how much I still miss her. She was a gorgeous hen! Pollux was the first BC I bred as well and was a handsome,
well marked bird too. Pity having to say goodbye to them.
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| Peaceful Poephila |
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Happy Holidays 2005. Meet Keeowee - a Creamino Shafttail hen that was handraised and handfed by me.
She is the first Creamino Shaftie that I've bred and perhaps my most enjoyable breeding experience in 2005. Along with
her sister, Keo, they both remain very tame. Keeowee is particularly sweet. She loves to come out of her cage
and sit in the palm of my hand. She also likes to have her cheek coverts scritched. Keo is more timid
about me, but loves to go for flights around the birdroom. Keeowee is very shy to fly about the bird room. Two
sisters, two very different personalities.
To make this work of Keeowee, I set up my Canon G2 Sureshot on a tripod. Despite that fact that Keeowee will come
to me when I call her, it still took three weeks to get a very blurry photo of Keeowee in flight that was similar to what
I had in my mind. The drawing was the easy part. :-)
Plant is flowering red gum or ecalyptus.
Quote is from Upanishads 35. The Upanishads are an ancient Hindu spiritual text of learning.
The word for peace in Sanskrit is Shanti. To say 'Om Shanti Shanti Shanti' means to have peace of mind, peace of body,
peace of spirt. It's also a wish for peace both individually as well as for the world as a whole. In other
words, 'May Peace and Peace and Peace Be Everywhere'. This is a common Hindu and Buddist meditational chant, but
I think it is fitting for all people, regardless of religious belief systems and is very appropriate for this Holiday Season.
This drawing took about 36 hours - not including getting the photo of Keeowee.
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