false cherry of Cambridge

Prunus pseudocerasus cantabrigiensis, woul you believe it. meaning something like "false cherry of Cambridge". blooming today in University botanic garden of(surprise!) Cambridge.

I don't know, maybe it's not that strange, the garden is old, there must be a few plants that originate there (I even found a reference to an article dedicated to such plants). But it definitely was a surprise to read this name on a little plaque.

eggs

for somebody who's working with picture stocks, I am very slow reacting to seasonal events - good time for making Easter eggs pictures was about half a year earlier. but I've only just learned how to stretch a design over a 3d shape, so - here they are



you can zoom in at fotolia by click on the image

pear-shaped

well, they have little choice in this matter

is my fringe too long?

yes it was and is cut a bit now :)

Blue triangle butterfly

several versions of vector illustration of Graphium sarpedon butterfly ("blue triangle") overlayed with old paper texture.

I am still very new to the adobe illustrator, but I like it :)

color version of white can be seen here

apple day

was spraying some water on a cotton shirt (to avoid ironing, you know), and sprayed some on this apple. I do realize it's not too original (to put it mildly) - there are millions of wet apple pics out there, bu I guess I just like waterdrops

jade vine

Jade vine is in bloom in Cambridge botanic gardens, so if you are at all interested - it's good time for a visit. One of the strangest-colored plants I've ever seen

harmony

Friendsfeed at livejournal brought me an absolutely delightful online drawing tool called harmony - http://mrdoob.com/projects/harmony/#sketchy
(if server is not working, it's because everybody's passing on this link, just wait for a bit).

I freely admit that I spent unreasonable amount of time drawing things. Shame it doesn't allow to save a hi-res image, but never mind the usefulness, eh

Having a graphic tablet helps, but mouse's good too.

drawing hair

had a go at drawing hair in illustrator. doesn't really work, but then, what with being green, those hair probably had no chance on being convincing anyway. face is more or less modelled on Timur's (compare with )this picture), although proportions changed to make it less child-like

I think I did a lot better with drawing hair with watercolor. Still, I am quite pleased

full frame at fotolia

chinese pears

apparently, more'n one type of fruit is called "chinese pears", this one is Ya pear, or "Duck pear", because of the shape.

They look beautiiful when freshly out of packaging, but bruise and darken amazingly easily

 Ya pears on Adobe stock 

snowdrops on black

a little bit more of the same, it's that time of the year

blue and yellow

outrageously oversaturated in yellow band, I know. but it got a certain something in exchange, hard to define, but it sort of speaks to me.

snowdrops

mandatory yearly snowdrops picture. looks like the weather is changing finally.

left behind

as far as I know, the scooters don't belong to the pair walking up the steps. but the accidental color-coordination created this impression of two pets* left behind when the owners went for a walk

* - (dogs, I guess, cats don't do that "look mournfully after" act as good

tulips

with tulips, I like when there's a lot of them. bucketful (why one "l", for crying out loud? I would never understand this language), for preference. Alas, I don't have a suitably ornamental bucket to hold this lot, but hey, I still bought three bunches. they take most of the space on the dinner table, so the setting becomes somewhat problematic. Still

Pac-Man Graveyard

those strange sculptures are in Palma, sort of between the cathedral and the seafront. I didn't find them hugely interesting till Yuri suddenly came up with a name for the whole complex - Pac-man Graveyard. And yes, those things do look like big stone pac-mans that plummeted from the sky and got stuck in the pavement.

not that Yuri played a lot of it, but at least one episode in Futurama features an appearance by both mr and mrs pac-man

what exactly did the sculptor meant remains unknown to me. and uninteresting, too

waka waka waka

nice doggy

we only had two full days on Mallorca, and we spent the first one in Palma. It is now out of season, and the cathedral-old town area is perfectly pleasant - not crowded narrow streets, little pretty graden with citrus trees and goldfish we stumbled upon, etc. Overall atmosphere is kind of generic Mediterranean. Once out of old town area, which is not very big, again, it reminds of many other places at once - Agherro and Malaga especially, at least for me, but obviously I haven't been everywhere.

Unexpected success with our kids was museum of modern arts, and that with us even not going inside it - they have some abstract sculptures outside. you also get a good view over the rooftops from what I think was city walls and now house some of the collection.

The cedar-cone structure behind Timur was outside too. I immediately (and wrongly) thought it was by Andy Goldsworthy, but no, it was by a different author - don't remember the name.

Little doggy was hanging around the cone, and wanted to make friends with Timur (as many dogs do). Timur got somewhat worried if the nice doggy was a stray, but with not one, but two collar on it, I guess it was very much owned by someone

Parakeets

there were quite a lot of those loud birds in the little pine grove by the beach in Santa Ponsa. The built complicated-looking nests in the branches, and were easily outnumbering ubiquitous pigeons. there was at least one restaurant named after them (restaurante papagayo), and local-looking people were feeding them - something different from what they fed pigeons, since each feeder attracted either pigeons or parrots, but not both together.

they were obviously not native to balearics, so I made a quick search just now. they are monk parakeets apparently, native to subtropics of Argentina. wikipedia article doesn't list balearics as a home to feral flocks. maybe I should go and correct it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monk_Parakeet

PS: I just did, but am not sure if the change will stay since I have no source of information that wikipedia would consider appropriate. reference to blog will probably be considered as spam

fake waterspout

I have a few pet fears. those include flying (not very original, I know), and natural disasters of various kind. I never experienced one yet, and hopefully never will, but I do feel somewhat panicky when, for instance, wind is getting too strong for my liking

picture above is not a real tornado, of course. people who saw one will probably point out a lot of things that are wrong .

but there is some justification behind it - when on Lanzarote in December last year, we saw this cloud that I think was trying to become a funnel, but kind of abandoned the idea half-way. I took a picture (surprise, surprise). and worked on it a bit :)


that's how the original cloud looked, only the contrast bumped up.


Island in the background is Fuerteventura

cattleya

another one of a few orchid I have that not only survived after the first bloom, but started blooming again.
It was standing by a single-glazed window, ie it was quite cold, what with the weather we had this winter. it took almost two months for the plant to grow the buds to what I though was a goodish size.
yesterday I took it off the windowsill and put it on the table in the middle of a warm room, and it *almost* opened overnight, only two petals are still stuck together. maybe it was just a good timing, or course, but I am inclined to think it decided that warm season is finally here :)