Category: Art

Animal Contest: Results!

April 14, 2022

At the halfway point of our animal painting postcard contest, we were tied at 3 wins apiece and it was anyones game. All the paintings are now complete, sent, received and judged. It’s time for the final results! With no further ado…

Anglerfish

The judges (who were picking the subjects) began to get creative here, and this pick was one that would test our ability to paint lighting effects! Mine is on the right and Bernard’s on the left, and you can see our approaches are quite different. Mine seems cartoony, but I learned doing research that there are quite a few different types of anglerfish and I did my best to reproduce one of the more unusual breeds.

The judges had trouble with this one, and three split their votes. In the end I won with my fish 3.1 – 1.9, with many judges citing my light as being the decider. Here’s some specific comments:

“The fish on the right because of how well the glowing orb has been rendered.”
“The fish on the left looks a bit like something else – an orc or goblin. I think that’s because the surrounding murk looks like hair and a neck.”
“I like how dark the one on the right is and the creepy eyes.”

One judge may have said Bernard’s looks like an orc, but I can’t unsee what Bernard himself said his fish resembles: Mr T!

Porg

And here’s a judge giving us a not-real animal! Mine is on the left and Bernard’s on the right, and… well oh dear. I made a critical error in rendering the rainbow in the background (for no reason other than to use my new neon paints) and Bernard himself cited his method was to produce a portrait in the shortest time possible. Overall, the judges weren’t too impressed with either of these and it seems they were mostly choosing the one they felt least unimpressive!

Bernard won 3 – 2, and my two votes – both for the rainbow – were countered by three votes against the rainbow! It seems the judges had difficulty seeing past my the rainbow when evaluating these:

“The rainbow looks a bit half-hearted.”
“The one on the right looks like a spaniel.”
“I haven’t thought too much about the size of these artworks up to this point. I have always known that they are on postcards so in fact quite small. I can appreciate the difficulty of creating a detailed and interesting artwork in such a small space, especially in watercolour. Still the one on the right feels a bit lazy. Has the artist become bored with the competition. Is he lacking inspiration? Perhaps he is not inspired by the subject? Perhaps, like my hated of Minions, he despises the supposed cuteness of the fictional creature whose existence seems completely worthless. The banality of the subject has been rescued in the artwork on the left by the splashy rainbow, and this artwork therefore wins.”
“I LOVE the right. That porg pout. Holy bajesus!”

Quokka

Mine is on the right, and Bernard’s on the left. Do these paintings even depict the same creature? If you’re wondering, I had attempted – and utterly failed – to paint a fur texture freehand. Even before the paint had dried on mine I said to KLS “This is Bernard’s to lose” but in the back of my mind I hadn’t forgotten the judge’s comment on the his porg and thought perhaps I could sneak a win?

It turns out I had no chance, and his painting blew mine away. The only surprise was I got any votes at all, and that his win was only 3.5 – 1.5. And yet this shouldn’t have been a surprise, since the judges continued to be as unpredictable as ever! Their comments:

“These are both delightful but the one on the right wins.”
“This is a tie. I think left presents the subject a little bit better but fundamentally it looks quite derpy. Also the nose looks weird. The right has an evil look on its face… I don’t trust the right quokka!”
“Having seem them up close in real life when I visited Rottnest Island, I feel confident in selecting the artwork on the left as the one which most accurately captures the quokka’s stupidly happy spirit“

Frog

The very first thing that entered my mind when frog was given to us as the next subject was a frog prince. I rejected it as too whimsical, and instead planned to paint a poison dart frog. But black paints are problematic (see my gorilla…) and I couldn’t get the prince out of my mind. Plus I did have some metallic watercolour paint…

Mine is on the left and Bernard’s on the right, and this one gave the judges quite a bit of trouble! Both approaches are fundamentally different, both striking in their own way and neither easily dismissable due to technical faults. Judging for this one was easily the longest of the entire contest, but in the end I won 3-2. Here’s what the judges had to say:

“King frog is best frog!”
“I love the gold crown on left, but I adore the slight leftward angle of the right head.”
“I like the color contrast of poisonous frog on mushroom. I like the eyes and soft feel of the painted frog, a little bit like Monet, but the coloring is too weak.”
“Left seems crafted to appeal to the supposed preferences of the judge. One might find the bright pretty colors and shiny baubles somewhat obvious and patronizing but I hate to admit I love this picture. Simple, balanced, well-crafter. The crown is magical. While this artwork is largely fairytale it’s as charming as a prince.”

Spider

There’s over 45,000 different types of spider on Earth and yet – with no collaboration – we both chose the same one! To Americans this is a black widow, but to both of us this was a redback spider. Going into this one I had a comfortable 6 – 4 lead, so I knew at least the contest would be a tie, and as such perhaps the pressure was off. But I redoubled my efforts, and in this case that meant I put extra effort into the web and perhaps not as much into the spider: mine is on the right and Bernard’s on the left.

As soon as I saw Bernard’s I knew the win would be his, and yet I was once again surprised when the judges agreed, albeit with a slight 2.9 – 2.1 victory. It turns out my web was impressive enough to score me a few points! Here’s the comments:

“The left spider is superb. How the artist was able to create such dimension with just two colours is genius. The natural stance of the spider is perfectly captured. The legs are well defined and the abdomen beautifully bulbous, ready to devour her mate.”
“The one on the right has a cartoon quality. The spider is cute but harmless. The colours are bright and the definition in the artwork belies the medium. The web is particularly well done.
“A tie. The shadow on the left is pretty nice. The web on the right I appreciate because it looks like it took a bit of effort. In the end though they both need to die in a fire because spiders!”

Scarlet Macaw

Mum chose the first subject (Panda) and it was finally time for her second choice. We were expecting squirrel but for our last animal she chose a colorful parrot! Bernard’s is on the left and mine on the right, and once again our efforts confounded the judges.

This was the third time three judges split their votes, and perhaps fittingly this was the result with the closest final score. In the end I squeaked in with a 2.7 – 2.3 win, and it literally came down to the very last vote of the contest! Here’s what the judges had to say:

“I vote for the one on the left, which has the best watercolor technique.”
“Left has more depth.”
“The colours are done well in both birds. The face gave each of you trouble. The winner is the one on the right; I love the composition.”
“The one on the right sparked the most joy.”
“Left is the better watercolour but right has better colours.”

Final Results!

Twelve animals over three months, and 60 individual evaluations by our panel of judges. It’s time for the final results…

I won, with 7 wins to Bernard’s 5!

Looking at total points, I scored 33.8 to Bernard’s 26.2, which means the final decision came down to only 4 votes. Looking at individual entries, it could be argued that Snake won the entire contest for me (since I swept that 5 – 0).

Looking back on the contest as a whole, here’s our opinions on our work, and the results:

Bernard felt his best piece was his cat, and while I agree it was superb, I think his very best was his spider.
I felt my best piece was my eagle, and Bernard agreed.
Bernard felt his worst was his Porg, but I believe his snake was weaker.
I felt my worst piece was my quokka, but he thought it was my cat.
Bernard believes he should have won cat instead of me, and that I should have won eagle instead of him, and I agree with him on both of these.
When asked for a statement on the judging, Bernard said this: “My win was clearly stolen by a panel of judges easily distracted by bold colors and metallic paints!“
My comment on the judging is: “My win was harder than it should have been due to judges overlooking blatant rules violations by an opponent who brought pencil sketches to a watercolour contest!“

Jesting aside, thanks very much to all the judges for your valued and wise critique. Watch your mailboxes for a special reward from an award-winning artist…

We didn’t take as many work-in-progress pictures this time around, but here’s a few of mine:

I used washi tape for my spider web, which I cut lengthwise before applying to the postcard and then painting over with a grey wash before removing the tape. I did this three times in fact (for practice), and the other two are in the mail on the way to lucky recipients. Of course while this looks good, the problem was the web was too small to paint a large spider on, and that it was extraordinarily difficult to find a reference photo posed correctly so I just made up the spider 🙂

The above shows my anglerfish, which used only two colors. As you can see by this point I had mostly eschewed sketches and was applying the paint from a sort-of palette.

The size of the images sent to judges made detail difficult, and I was especially concerned (for no reason, as it turned out) that the metallic paint for the crown on my frog wouldn’t be visible. The above is a detailed photo showing how fancy that paint looks!

So another annual contest has ended. If you’re keeping track I won Postcards (in 2020), Bernard won Portraits (in 2021) and now I have my second win for Animals in 2022. What will the 2023 contest be? Perhaps we already know… but you’ll have to come back next year to find out 🙂

100 Asian Stamps

April 7, 2022

Bernard sent me this for my birthday:

It’s an envelope containing 100 ‘Asien‘ stamps. Where did he get it? I don’t know, but whoever packed it was obviously German. Would it contain mostly CTOs or Cinderellas, or just loads of Indian stamps from the colonial days? And could 100 stamps really fit in this tiny envelope (about 1.5 x 2 inches)?

He requested a blog post on the contents, so here we go:

There were 5 Thai stamps, all depicting King Bhumibol Adulyadej who reigned for an astonishing 70 years until 2016. Many stamps featuring his likeness were issued and these seem to be from the 1970s.

The 3 Hong Kong stamps are unremarkable, and would (I assume) all predate 1984 when partial control was given to China. The queens portrait did feature on stamps after that date, but they were more colorful than these.

The 8 Vietnamese stamps seem to date from the late 70s through mid 80s are an interesting mix of nationalistic and historical topics. Some of these stamps are on very thin paper – almost like tissue. I like the designs and printing of these, especially considering they’re 30+ years old.

The 25 Indian stamps are typical of others I’ve seen from this country: small, detailed, and often showing traditional art or Gandhi. The family planning stamp at top right is interesting: I wonder if India attempted population control when this was issued in the 1970s? If so, it failed 🙂

3 Ceylon stamps (pre 1972) and 1 Sri Lanka stamp and none of them show tea! I wonder what language these are written in?

From the above 2 Nepali stamps I learned that 1975 was a ‘south Asia tourist year’. Imagine what it must have been like traveling to Nepal in 1975? The word ‘remote’ comes to mind.

Here we have 5 Bangladeshi stamps. Do you know where Bangladesh is without looking at a map? I think most westerners don’t, but will learn in the next few decades since Bangladesh is on the critical list of countries threatened by sea level rise. Some of the structures on these stamps may in time be in the ocean.

There were only 3 Korean stamps in the envelope and they’re all undated. According to what I found online, the stamp on the right is a Vietnam war memorial stamp issued in 1967 to support war veterans. I never knew Korea sent troops to Vietnam to fight with the USA!

As usual the 6 North Korean stamps are unused CTOs and almost certainly never intended for actual postage. I like the farm animals though 🙂

The 18 Pakistani stamps are superficially similar to the Indian ones, but overall bigger, more detailed and featuring a wider assortment of themes. One of them even contains some gold ink! The ‘service’ overprint visible on some of these denotes that the stamp was designated for use by a government department and not to be sold or used by civilians.

I’m fairly sure these 6 Mongolian stamps are also CTOs. Despite the postmarks they are unused and easily the largest ones in the envelope. The imagery is very Chinese isn’t it?

These 8 Japanese stamps are typical of the ones in the all-Nippon envelope I opened a year or so ago. When can I return to Japan and send you all some Japanese stamps?!?

And lastly we have 6 Israeli stamps. This is a strange inclusion, since Israel is over 4000 km from Asia, so I’ll assume whoever put this envelope together thought the Hebrew text was an Asian language? The five in the right all say ‘shekel’ (the Israeli currency unit) and were issued in 1981. All of these stamps are unused.

So there we go: 99 stamps from 13 countries. While none were repeated (I think, maybe I missed one or two) it looks like the label on the packet was a lie. And not a single Chinese stamp?!

The Land Collection

March 13, 2022

In the card game Magic: The Gathering (MTG) land cards provide the resources to play other cards. They’re ubiquitous and in the eyes of many players, boring. They are like the batteries in the toy: essential but often taken for granted.

The simplest type of land is called ‘basic land’. There are five of them – one for each colour – and they’ve been around since MTG launched back in 1993. And since I got back into Magic about 15 years ago I’ve collected them!

Its always been an informal collection: I just liked the art on them and made a point to keep one of each aside. In time I put them in a binder, and started seeking one ones I didn’t yet have. Over the years the binder grew and grew until it got almost too heavy to pick up, and a change was needed. These past few weeks I’ve sorted all my lands, sleeved and boxed them and had a good look at them all. This post shows off some of the collection.

The above are examples of some of the oldest and newest land cards I have. On the left we have a ‘beta’ card from 1993 and on the right an example from the latest set Kamigawa: Neon Destiny. It’s obvious how the design has updated on the nearly 30 years between them, but it’s notable that these two cards are identical as far as gameplay is concerned.

The above shows the progression of design of a Forest land from 1993 until 2020. You can see the various phases the basic design transitioned through, including the removal of the text describing how to use the card, which occurred relatively early on in the history of the game.

Here we have an assortment of promotional cards, most of which are foiled so they shine with a rainbow effect. These cards are obtained via in-store promotions or by attending events or – as with most of these – by buying them on the secondary market. None of these cost me more than a dollar or so, but some are worth five or ten times that now.

The above shows examples of non-English lands. MTG has been printed in 11 languages and I have lands in most of them (I think). The middle top card is an unusual exception: this is swamp printed in ‘phyrexian’ which is a (fake) language in the MTG universe.

Speaking of events, the above were all given to me by Adam, and are signed cards that he obtained from the artists at various events he attended. The middle one is heavily ‘altered’, which means the artist drew over the art with paint pens, leaving only the name of the card visible. For most of these artists, I have several different signed lands.

Here’s a unique inclusion: the ‘Florence lands‘! She decorated five lands with stickers many years ago and gave them to me as a gift. For all this time they had been the first page in the binder introducing the collection, and they remain an important and unique part of it. I wonder if she remembers making them?

In 1998, when MTG was five years old, an important and notable thing happened with land cards. In the set Unglued the first ‘full art’ land cards were printed. They dispensed with the text box at the bottom to fill the card with art and were very popular. Subsequent sets would rarely include new full art lands. The above shows examples from Unglued to Amonkhet (in 2017).

Full art lands have become more common in recent years, and the above five examples span less than three years of sets. Some think the island shown above (from Unstable) is the prettiest land card ever printed.

Some more basic lands. I’m a big fan of the black and white versions from the recent Innistrad sets, but many weren’t.

The above are five of the ten full art lands from the recent Kamigawa set. These are done in the Japanese ukiyo-e style and are some of the more unusual (and pretty!) lands MTG has ever printed.

Following on from the above is an unusual addition: these are unofficial ‘proxy’ cards made by fans. I got these on Etsy and they are another ukiyo-e inspired set done by a Japanese artist. The quality of these cards is incredibly high, and they’re almost indistinguishable from a real Magic card. (I’m amazed Hasbro hasn’t shut down people selling high quality proxies…)

The above show some of the more unusual and ‘rare’ lands I currently own. These are all from a type of release called ‘secret lairs’, which are very limited cards sold exclusively online. Unfortunately some of the lairs have contained lands, and since I believe they’re overpriced I’ll likely never obtain most of them. However I couldn’t resist buying a few examples on the secondary market. The top left is a ‘godzilla plains’ and the bottom right from a release that went overboard reverse-parodying the full art design motif.

Speaking of rare, a number of my lands have become very collectible. I have many ‘beta’ land cards, and those are worth $10 or more each today, and as I mentioned above some of my promo lands have appreciated a lot in recent years. But the biggest surprise as I was going through my collection was the current value of the so-called ‘APAC lands’.

These were a set of 15 land cards given to customers by game stores in the Asia-pacific region in 1998. I bought a full set many years ago for not much money (I think about $30) and they’ve massively appreciated since. The two above are worth about $150 each, and may be my most valuable magic cards! (I didn’t know this until a few days ago.)

There’s the whole collection. I don’t know exactly how many I have, but it’s more than 1500. I read recently that there’s been over 2200 unique land cards, so I’m missing a great deal, but I suspect most of them are promos or otherwise-unattainable releases like the European equivalents to the APAC lands.

In all these cards you’re probably wondering, which is my favourite? That’s an easy question, and the answer never changes. It’s this APAC plains, which shows Australia:

MTG is more successful than ever, and the set frequency seems to have increased, with each set bringing more basic lands. It’s a cheap card type to collect, since most players don’t care about the lands at all, so I’m not stopping any time soon. I’ll end this post with some examples of lands releasing in the remainder of 2022. If I ever update this post, you can assume I’ve got (some of) these as well:

Robot Claw