Realm of Possibilities

Might I interest you in some magical art? I haven't sold enough this month and I have bills to pay

anaisfae.art/shop

'Owls' by Louis Wain, (1860 - 1939)

wanted to paint these owls

Ural Owl (Strix uralensis), chick with it's mother, family Strigidae, Estonia

Photograph by Sven Zacek

Northern Hawk Owl (Surnia ulula), family Strigidae, order Strigiformes, found across northern parts of Eurasia and North America

photograph by Andy Nguyen

Happy New Year! Here is my holiday card from 2023. As an experiment, I ran this image through Glaze, one of several projects being developed at the moment to protect art and artists from having their work stolen by machine learning algorithms to feed computer generated art programs. Glaze was developed by the SAND Lab at the University of Chicago. It was quite a lengthy process- after I downloaded the app it took me well over an hour to glaze this single 200dpi image. I can see the subtle differences the program made when comparing this version to the original, but no one looking at it without the original would be likely to spot them. Unless the process of glazing an image speeds up considerably, I am unlikely to glaze everything I post online. However, I do plan to glaze artworks that I especially love, took me a long time to complete, or which I feel are more vulnerable to being stolen. Here's to making and sharing lots more art in 2024, despite all the complications!

instagram / patreon / portfolio / etsy / my book / redbubble

Cats being instructed in the art of mouse catching by an owl — Lombard school (oil on canvas, within a painted lunette, c.1700

I for one welcome our new strygine overlord. :)

Backstory: This gentleman escaped from Central Park Zoo in March after his enclosure there was vandalized, and there was a lot of concern over whether or not he could/would survive out of captivity. Unconcerned by this, Flaco settled himself in a particular area of Central Park and spent all the spring, summer, and most of the fall eating large numbers of rats, and genially allowing himself to be photographed by an ever-growing cadre of bird paparazzi.

Then a few weeks ago, possibly irked by repeated mobbing by assorted hawks and corvids, Flaco took off from his normal haunts and went on a brief tour of apartment-building courtyards on the Lower East Side. Now he's on the Upper West Side, within sight of Central Park (so food's no problem, should he feel like heading back that way to hunt), and shouting for everybody to hear that he owns the place. The image above shows him on the water tower of an apartment building at 86th and CPW.

If you look back through the Manhattan Bird Alert and Above 96th Twitter feeds, you'll see many splendid pictures of him. He's a handsome lad, and it's good to see him thriving.

What's in his future? Hard to tell. (Though some people on Twitter are suggesting he should run for mayor.) He may head upstate at some point. But he may decide he's quite happy to be a Manhattanite. As a fellow one, I wish him very well. :)

Mountain Scops Owl (Otus spilocephalus), juvenile, family Strigidae, order Strigiformes, Sattal, India

photographs by Khushboo and Rahul Sharma

human face owl is real and can hurt you

'Moon Ring' by Miyata Masayuki, (1926 - 1997)

this is the only good post i will ever make

[1893/10977] Buff-fronted owl - Aegolius harrisii

Order: Strigiformes (owls) Family: Strigidae (true owls)

Photo credit: Cesar Gustavo Chillon Solano via Macaulay Library

秋コーデ🦉🎩🍂

Louis Wain - Cats Nightmare, 1890