I saw a nice brick house a few weeks ago in Bielefeld, Germany and thought it would be an interesting project to recreate it digitally.
Here is my original photo:
And my recreation. Click on the image for a full-sized view.
Category: Digital Art
A rustic still life featuring a carved eagle I purchased in the Soviet Union many years ago with a few pine cones, a section of a pine branch, a sprig of needles and a few stones. The objects are resting on a caribou fur, a weathered wood beam wall serves as the background.
Click on image for a full-sized view:
Ravens are frequent characters in the legends of northern peoples around the world. In many cultures they are seen as tricksters, though often ultimately beneficial.
In some myths a Raven swallows the sun as it dips below the horizon, then flies eastward, all night, to the eastern horizon where he barfs it up; ensuring a new day.
In this tale from the Haida and Tlingit peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast of North America, a Raven is the reason the Universe is not eternally dark.
At the beginning of the world there was only darkness. Raven, who had existed from the beginning of time, was tired of groping about and bumping into things in the dark. One day Raven chanced upon the home of an old man who lived with his daughter. Raven, who was very sly, learned that the old man had a great treasure – all the light in the universe, contained in a tiny box concealed within many boxes. Raven vowed to steal the light. But how to get inside the house?
After thinking long and hard Raven devised a plan. He waited until the old man’s daughter came to the river to gather water. Then Raven changed himself into a single hemlock needle and dropped into the river, just as the girl was dipping her water-basket. As she drank from the basket, she swallowed the needle. It slipped and slithered down into her warm belly, where Raven transformed himself again, this time into a tiny human.
After sleeping and growing there for a very long time, Raven emerged into the world once more, this time as a human infant. Despite his strange appearance, Raven’s grandfather loved him. But the old man threatened dire punishment if he ever touched the precious treasure box. Nonetheless the Ravenchild begged and begged to be allowed to hold the light just for a moment.
One day the old man yielded, and lifted from the box a warm and glowing sphere, which he tossed to his grandson. As the light was moving toward him, the human child transformed into a gigantic black shadowy bird-form, wings spread ready for flight, and beak open in anticipation. As the beautiful ball of light reached him, Raven captured it in his beak! Moving his powerful wings, he burst through the smoke hole in the roof of the house, and escaped into the darkness with his stolen treasure.
And that is how light came into the universe.
Sheep grazing on the grounds of Blenheim Palace, in Oxfordshire near Woodstock, in February of 2020.
Sheep Grazing At Blenheim Palace
It is the principal residence of the Dukes of Marlborough. The palace is notable as the birthplace and ancestral home of Sir Winston Churchill.
Approximately 1800 ewes live on the palace estate. Each year give birth to a total average of 2800 lambs. Blenheim’s sheep are known as Scotch mules and are a mix of blackface ewes and blueface Leicesters.
The grassland at the World Heritage Site provides ideal conditions for the extensive flock to graze throughout the year.
Two birch bark baskets which I worked up as practice 3D modeling for the canoe project – especially the lacing, which is difficult to model, at least for me. Birch bark baskets come in many forms and styles. Sometimes the reddish inner bark shows on the outside as in the basket on the left; sometimes it is inside. The pattern on the left basket was adopted from an old pattern that I found on the Internet.
3D Rendering of Birch Bark Baskets
The current state of the birch bark canoe project. The hull is now “made of”birch bark, with the inner bark surface showing. I also added ribs, liner and thwarts (cross pieces). It still needs some tinkering, which I do in my spare time. See this space for future updates.
Click on the image for a full-size view.
a Siberian Tiger (Panthera tigris altaica), aka Amur or Ussuri Tiger, on a snowy, moonlit night in the forests of the Russian Far East.
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Light from the sun setting reflected from water and melting sea ice just offshore from snowy coastal mountains.
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An orange sun is low on the horizon, last light at sunset, or the first light of sunrise, reflecting off snow-covered peaks. This image produced in Dogwaffle Howler’s 3D landscape renderer.
Click on the image below for a full-size view.
Current progress: Roughing out of the hull sections has been completed. That was both much easier and quicker than I had anticipated. I need to do a bit of tweaking where the geometry is rough, primarily on prow and stern, both of which, as opposed to the rest of the hull, were somewhat more difficult shapes to model than expected. I also reworked the gunnels resulting in a much better fit. It would probably be more correct to refer to these as frame stringers. Almost identical parts will sit atop of them; these additional parts will be the gunnels.
Click on the image below for a full-size view.
Anyway; the hardest parts of the project, the basic frame and hull are complete. Everything else will be relatively easy, but time consuming. Joining the hull sections into a unified whole, and then thickening the surface so that “bump”, a 3D texture or roughness, can be assigned to it. While inner birch bark is fairly smooth, there is always natural variation in thickness and bumpiness resulting from the lenticels (slit-like pores).
A second instance of the hull will be necessary for the texture of the inside of the canoe. The last task will be to make the ribs, thwarts (cross pieces), and a few odds and ends.
Here’s a test render in DAZ Bryce to see what the model in its current state looks like in the wild. It floats!
Click on the image for a full-size view.
Next time: more tweaking of the geometry and birch bark and wood textures.
Cold Lands Artist 