Time painted: December 2011
Penguins!
This was a commission by my Dad, to create a painting for his sister for a Christmas present.
It would have been easier if I knew more about my aunt than “she’s a dental hygienist” and “she likes penguins”.
My Dad’s side of the family isn’t very close. I haven’t seen my uncle on that side for, what, a decade or more? It’s just not a high priority for them to get together, and they’re fine with that. And I don’t have any cousins on anything on that side either, it’s just me and my sister.
My Mom’s side, on the other hand, is rather close. Well, as close as a family full of social phobes can be. I’m not sure if it’s nurture or nature (most likely a combination), but social phobia seems to be hereditary on that side of the family. Along with high intelligence. The combination leads to really interesting family get-togethers, and very little drama.
We don’t have the drunk uncle, the feuding aunts, the cousin who got in serious trouble with the law (or should have) that far too many families seem to have. Instead, we just kinda get along. Social phobia tends to make one a bit more observant of others, a bit less likely to make a fuss without thinking about it first, and a lot more accepting of people just going off and doing their own thing. It makes Christmas (and other times) somewhat relaxing. We might not be doing things together 24 hours a day, since we all need along time. We might not have a massive food-filled party inviting half the neighbors, partly because very few people in the family like to cook (I’m an exception to that, and I’m pretty sure I’m already one of the best cooks in the family at age 26). Instead we just get along, in our own shy and geeky ways, playing pinochle or just sitting around all reading our own books.
As for the painting, it was a bit of a rush job. I made it in a week. And most of that was painting and repainting the gradient in the background until I was happy with it.
It’s done using Chinese Painting Colors. They act very similar to watercolors, including being water-soluble, but have a few differences. I actually tend to use them more as you would oil paints, building up layers of color until it’s right rather than laying down a thin glaze of the already-correct color as you do in watercolors.
The colors aren’t quite right in this piece. I use a lot of the indigo paint in my paintings, because of the lovely dark blue-with-a-tint-of-green it produces. However, when I scan it, it loses that tint of green, and heads straight for solid blue. This piece is far more monochromatic on the computer screen than it is on the page.
But it’s still full of penguins. Humboldt Penguins, to be specific. One of the penguin species that live nowhere near the south pole, and in fact most of their range is above the Tropic of Capricorn, so they’re downright tropical penguins!
The reason they live as far north as they do is the Humboldt current. It is a cold, slow moving current running up the western South American coast from Antarctica, and presumably the penguins followed it up the coast. It’s teeming with life, from otters to dolphins to penguins to lots and lots of the fish we eat. It’s not a very well-known area globally (South American in general has that problem), which may be part of why the best video I could find on the Humboldt Current is from a conservancy trying to stop overfishing. It’s a bit propagandistic (if, in my political views, propagandistic for the right reasons) so if that bugs you, you can just mute it and see the lovely video of the local animals. Or watch it in Spanish. I had been hoping for a nice nature documentary on this ecosystem or the like, but there’s little of that on Youtube. What there is all has a political bent, mainly focused on the very real problem of overfishing in the area. Here is another piece of that type, a rather well done one. But it doesn’t really talk about why the local area is so rich in sea life. I really couldn’t find much in general about it.
At least they have adorable penguins.
