Crista Forest's Animals & Art

Oct 4, 2016

Holstein Cow Vegan Shirt on Amazon

I'm happy to announce my artwork is now becoming available on Amazon Merch clothing. Here's my first two available shirts featuring my artwork of a mother Holstein cow nurturing her cute calf. These particular shirts are designed for vegans and vegetarians who want to show their support for animal rights.

The first one is the vegan shirt with the saying "Be Kind, Be Vegan" underneath the image. It's available in 5 colors, blue, green, white, and two shades of gray. The women's shirt is shown here.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01M1XQBFM/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B01M1XQBFM&linkCode=as2&tag=forest07-20&linkId=703a0de65a1602a223adc1c0e6ff1841

Holstein Cow and Calf Vegan Blue Heart T-shirt

Next is the vegetarian version with the saying, "Vegetarian, because I care" on it. This shirt is also available in several colors, blue, black, navy, gray, and white. The men's shirt is shown here.

Holstein Cow and Cute Calf Blue Heart Vegetarian

Both shirts are available in men's, women's, and kids' sizes.

More to come soon! :)

Oct 2, 2016

My New Birds Coloring Book Available For Pre-Order

I'm so excited. My new coloring book, Birds At Home, is now available for pre-order on Amazon. The book has drawings of all 50 state birds and flowers. It's expected to ship October 20. It's printed in the USA by Fox Chapel Publishing.

Birds at Home Coloring Book: 50 State Birds and Flowers

"Relax as you color America's most cherished birds and flowers with this delightful coloring book. All 50 states recognize an official bird and blossomand from Kentucky cardinals and California quail to Mississippi magnolias and Arkansas apple blossoms, therere all here. Wildlife artist Crista Forest presents accurately detailed illustrations of every states emblematic treasures. Depicted in their natural environment, each pair of flora and fauna is ready to color with markers, colored pencils, watercolors, or gel pens. Crista gets you started with handy coloring guides that include suggested color palettes and fully colored examples. Printed on one side only of archival-grade, acid-free, 200-year paper, each perforated page detaches easily for gifting or display."

I just got my box of samples and the book looks great! No, I'm not bragging about my art. I mean the quality of the book is great. The lines of the drawings are dark and crisp, the paper quality is good, and the print colors are accurate. It's a well-made book.

I think you'd be pleased with the quality, whether you want the book to color in yourself or to give as a gift to someone you know who likes to color. And they'll be available just in time for the holidays so they'll make great stocking stuffers too!

Take a look at the product page on Amazon for more pictures and details. If you do buy it I'd love to hear what you think of it. Come back later and leave comments here.

Oct 1, 2016

New iPhone 7 Cases Now Available on Pixels

Pixels.com, aka Fine Art America (FAA does not have as many products as Pixels, however), has updated their phone cases and now carries iPhone 7 and 7 Plus cases. All my artwork that was available on iPhone 6 cases has now been updated to be available on the 7s as well. I have sorted my Pixels store into categories by subjects. I have Birds, Deer, Wild Cats, Wild Dogs, Horses, other Domestic Animals, and a misc other wildlife category to make it easier for you to find the products in the subjects you like best.

I have been doing a lot of bird paintings over the past couple years so the Birds category is my biggest now with about 70 images to choose from. It has a wide variety of bird species, mostly songbirds like bluebirds, chickadees, cardinals, and goldfinches, but also hummingbirds, ducks, a crow, a pileated woodpecker, and a bald eagle. Here are a couple samples from the Birds category.

http://pixels.com/products/hummingbird-greeting-card-1-crista-forest-iphone7-case-cover.html

http://pixels.com/products/goldfinch-blossoms-greeting-card-1-crista-forest-iphone7-case-cover.html

http://pixels.com/products/apple-chickadee-greeting-card-3-crista-forest-iphone7-case-cover.html

Next most popular subject is Horses. There are several breeds to choose from including Quarter Horses, Morgan, Friesian, and some warmbloods such as the Hanoverian. All come in full color versions but I've also made a few versions in sepia to give an aged photo effect. This works particularly nice for the Western Quarter Horse and Native American Pinto War Horse images. Here they are, the quarter horse in full color, and the pinto in sepia.

http://pixels.com/products/precision-horse-painting-crista-forest-iphone7-case-cover.html

http://pixels.com/products/buckskin-war-horse-in-sepia-crista-forest-iphone7-case-cover.html

In the Deer section I have both mule deer and whitetail deer to choose from. These make great gifts for the outdoorsman or deer hunter you know.

http://pixels.com/products/whitetail-buck-portrait-crista-forest-iphone7-case-cover.html

http://pixels.com/products/whitetail-buck-phone-case-crista-forest-iphone7-case-cover.html

These are not limited to iPhone 7 cases. On each page there is a drop-down menu on the right where you can choose from new or older iPhone cases, as well as Galaxy cases. Check out all the iPhone 7 cases by category here:

Phone cases featuring bird paintings
Phone cases featuring deer art
Cases featuring domestic animals
Phone cases with horse paintings
Cases with wild dogs such as wolves and foxes
Cases with wild cats like tigers and leopards

Sep 28, 2016

Bird Paintings Calendar

Since I've done so many bird paintings over the last few years I've decided to compile a bunch of them and make a 2017 calendar with them. Here I put my most popular bird painting, the chickadees and apples, on the front cover. The cover shows the date as "20XX" because it is customizable. If you already have enough calendars for 2017 come back later and customize it for 2018. Wow, I'm talking about 2018? Scary to be thinking of being just a few years away from 2020 already, isn't it!? Geez, when I was a kid even the year 2000 was eons away. The year 2020 was total sci-fi. My, how time flies! Haha!

Beautiful Bird Paintings Calendar by ForestWildlifeArt

Here are a few interior images. They have background colors that I chose to match, but you can change those if you don't happen to like the colors I picked.

Beautiful Bird Paintings Calendar

You can also customize more than the date and background. There are several different calendar grid styles, and you can add or remove images and text as you please. Don't like the words "Happy Holidays" on the December page? You can change that to "Merry Christmas" or something else, or remove it entirely. Add special dates, such as your anniversary, or a child's birthday, or other events. It's all changeable. That's what I love about Zazzle, is that you, the customer, can personalize anything and everything about their products. So have fun with it and make it truly unique for yourself or as a gift!

Sep 27, 2016

New Christmas Birds Painting Finished!

If you've been following my posts you know I've been working on a digital painting of birds with a Christmas theme. I actually finished this painting last week and wanted to post it right away but other things got in the way. But I had a good reason. I went out of town for a few days to celebrate my dad's 90th birthday! How often do people get to see their parents live so long? I've seen so many friends lose parents, spouses, or even children way before their time that feel very fortunate my father is still with us at 90 years old!

My sister flew out to Seattle from New York. Then we drove down to Vancouver, WA where my other sister, and our father, live. We also have a cousin there. My dad loves seafood so we all took him to Joe's Crab Shack in Vancouver, WA, which has a nice view of the Columbia River from the dining area. Here's a picture of us, me on the far left, my two sisters on either side of Dad, and our cousin in the front. We're all showing off our goofy glowing party rings that Dad finds amusing.

Dad had a great time and has decided we should have a party like this every 90 days instead of every 90 years! Haha!

Ok, so that's why I didn't post my finished bird painting earlier. But I'm back now so here it is!

http://pixels.com/featured/christmas-birds-and-garland-crista-forest.html

I designed this for use on holiday greeting cards, obviously. But it also works on other items you might like to have for some holiday decorations, like this throw pillow.

However, I know in some cases you might not want the greeting so I also made a version without the colorful "Happy Holidays" banner for use on other holiday decor where you might want something a little more natural looking. This throw blanket, for example.

Holiday Birds & Christmas Garland Throw

I also made a version with just the cardinals that works better on smaller objects like this Christmas ornament.

Holiday Cardinals & Christmas Garland Metal Ornament

I don't have these images on all the products I want to put them on yet. But feel free to browse around my Pixels page or my Zazzle store to see what's currently available. Here are the links.

Birds and Garland products on Pixels
Birds and Garland on Zazzle
Cardinals and Garland on Zazzle

I'm still adding this image to products in my Zazzle store so if you don't see what you want check back soon, or leave a comment here telling me what you want me to add next.

Sep 14, 2016

New Christmas Birds Digital Painting - WIP4

In my previous Christmas birds post I had just finished up the 3rd bird, the black-capped chickadee. In this one I'm sharing a quick progression of the 4th and final bird on the fence, the eastern bluebird.

I'll start with the outline image I sketched for the basic size, shape, and placement of the bird.

Next here I've blocked in the bird's basic colors.

Next, I remove the outline layer and start adding the details, texture, and shading. Here you can see the texture of the feathers on the head as well as eye detail.

And here's a detail of the wing feathers defined.

And finally, the finished bluebird!

Next I'm moving on to adding more decorations to the garland on the fence. Then I'll add a little bit of background and snow to the painting and it will be done! Stay tuned.