TET.Life (The Extraordinary Tourist Life)

Belgica in the ice. 1897. Photo: Adrien de Gerlache   Y ou wouldn't ordinarily think of cats and penguins together in the same image but that's what I found myself creating when thinking of an idea for my next painting. I have painted penguins before as part of my Australian Animals series from the early 2000's, and I have a couple of cartoon  penguins (that you can see in a very old post, Designing Formal Penguins ) I created for a Yeti skateboard graphic, so, I didn't just randomly think, 'penguins'. Recently I had a revelation about my art, in that I don't simply paint pictures of cats, I paint 'relationships'. Almost all of my paintings of cats feature two or more cats, or a cat with something, such as a butterfly, bird, fish, goat... and why not a penguin? However, I didn't want to just paint some random cat with some random penguin. I wondered if there was ever any real cats in history that may have a reason to meet a penguin? Turns out, on...

"Who's the GOAT?" by TET 2026 Original Acrylic Painting on Canvas (40 x 50cm). Buy My Original Artwork or High Quality Prints (ArtPal Store) Prints Available here . (RedBubble Store) A bout a month and a half ago I first wrote about the inspiration for my latest whimsical art cat, Who is the GOAT?, in my post,  TET Artwork Diary: Cats, Goats, and Battlestar Galactica's Cylon, Number Six . That particular post covers where the idea came from and the challenges I had sketching the final composition. Worth a read, if you haven't already, to get the full story of this artwork. This post I'm mostly going to cover the behind the scenes of actually painting the artwork and, of course, give you the links to where you can buy the original or high quality prints. Rather than go into any great detail on my painting process, which I've talked about numerous times in many of my videos, I'm just going to focus on a few key highlights unique to this work. First, i...

Original Artwork: Mocha and Mascarpone. Work in progress. T here are now two ways you can purchase prints of my Art Cats, one which includes the option to buy the original artwork if it is still available, and you can even commission a custom Art Cat painting. Why would you want one of my whimsical cat paintings? Well, if you want to bring the same sense of crazy fun into your home as perfectly content house cat with the zoomies, then that's the vibe I'm going for with my whimsical art cats. Place my quirky art cats in any space where you want to radiate positive vibes and smiles. I particularly recommend putting my art in creative spaces such as your home office, art studio, book nook, or even your kid's rooms. Pretty much anywhere that you want a feel good burst of inspiration and a content smile. Now you know the why, here's where you can start collecting my art online... (why wouldn't you want more reasons to smile in your home?!) Some of the options you have wh...

Y ou wouldn't know it from this blog, where I reference it a handful of posts , but I am a big fan of the rebooted 2003  Battlestar Galactica Series . Which is how I come to be Facebook following the series most recognised Cylon, Six - well the actress who plays six anyway, Tricia Helfer . One thing you'll learn pretty quickly about Tricia is that she owns a lot of rescue cats - and that she's more at home being a farm/country girl, surrounding herself with animals than she is living in cities - though she definitely seems to drift between the two worlds with ease. Cats and Goats Tricia with Larry and Earl. Still from Tricia Helfer's FB Video . However, this is a blog post about a cat and goats, specifically Trica's Goats, Larry and Earl, that currently live at the Farm of the Free . She posted a video of herself visiting them on her Facebook . Click the link for the full video. Cat at Farm of the Free with Tricia, Larry, & Earl. Still from Tricia Helfer's F...

Mocha and Mascarpone by TET 2026 Original Acrylic Painting on Canvas (40 x 50cm). Buy My Original Artwork or High Quality Prints (ArtPal Store) Prints Available here . (RedBubble Store) M ocha and Mascarpone are so named because naming them 'Coffee and Cream' seemed a little on the nose, no matter how nice that sounds. The theme is friendship between two, somewhat exotic cats, Mocha, clearly Siamese, while Mascarpone says she is Siberian. Are they an item? I guess it’s all in the interpretation of the look these two are exchanging in the warm, evening light, the eyes, the negative space… that sharp blue glance from Mocha versus Mascarpone’s half-closed, content grin In these new cat paintings I’m attempting to create more story and interaction between my cats within each new painting. This artwork being inspired by two of my earlier cat paintings, Shakira , and Rose’s Tale . Initially it was going to be those two cats but my recent cats are more stylised, making these two feel...

Books Available from Lulu (Recommended) or Amazon , Stickers, Coasters, Mugs Visit the Resident Dragon Art Time Store . E victed from his cave, so the city can build a new freeway, aspiring actor and fire dragon, Red, temporarily moves into the suburban home of his friend, and former short film director, TET, and his two pets, Cool Froyd the Cat and Grrr Dog. Resident Dragon Book 1 A Dragon's Gotta Live Somewhere. This is the premise that starts my thirteen book series of joke a day gag cartoons, of which the first three are now available for you to own and share with your dragon, cat, dog, or human white male (business suit wearing) loving friends! Intended as an alternative coffee table book, the humor is family friendly and relatable to anyone who's ever lived in a shared house with pets (and possibly a dragon), while the art is bright and bold enough to simply be enjoyed by younger readers even though these are not intended to be children's books. These three premium, ...

ArtHelper prides itself on being all 'human-made' art. T he idea of an AI, trained specifically on art business marketing, that can not only offer advice on marketing your work, but also assist with creating all the content too, is certainly appealing. Especially to those of us who would rather spend more time creating our art than trying to sell it. ArtHelper does just that whilst attempting to be your 'home' on the internet. A destination for your profile and portfolio, a marketplace for your art, and a directory of artists as well, with one distinction - all the art must be human made. Which, for you AI artists, doesn't count the prompt for AI generated art - because the idea, according to ArtHelper's creators, isn't the art. Which is a fair point, in terms of promoting art 'made by a human', but can get kind of murky when you understand that not all AI art is generated from a single prompt... and 'found object art' isn't actually ...

Cat Amongst the Pigeons by TET 2026-02-22 Original Acrylic Painting on Canvas (15.5" x 12"). Buy My Original Artwork or High Quality Prints  (ArtPal Store). Alternatively, buy prints of the artwork through  RedBubble . I n my previous post, Painting Whimsical Cats (and probably other stuff) Again After Almost a Decade Away From Traditional Art , I, obviously, mentioned I'm painting cats again. It wasn't an empty promise. As you can see I've created my first official, new cat painting - since the previous one was actually a test piece - titled Cat Amongst the Pigeons . This painting features two firsts; the first time I've painted a cat with pigeons, and the first time I've broken the edge of my white border with the image. (In case I'm not explaining that well, the cat's ears extend into the white border that is usually masked off with tape during painting). I just didn't want to clip the cat's ears! WIP Collage of Cat Amongst the Pigeons ...

Blue Sky, Butterfly, and JAC by TET. Acrylic on Canvas. Buy My Original Artwork or High Quality Prints  (ArtPal Store). Alternatively, buy prints of the artwork through  RedBubble . WIP of a New Whimsical Cat Painting by TET. O ver the Christmas and New Year holidays I spent a lot of my time reflecting on where I'm at as an artist and content creator, torn between the need to at least make some kind of regular income, and the need to just create art. Possibly controversially, while I am an early adopter of generative image and video AI creations, and would say they are an art form, they're not a very fulfilling art form for myself. A useful tool, yes, but even when used with my own art, they're more interesting than anything I would stand by and say 'that was a satisfying creative journey' I just made. Creating with generative AI is more like being a director of a film, where all the actual art is being done by everyone else, but you get a say in the direction and...

A t the beginning of the year I introduced you to my latest cartoon/comic series, Resident Dragon (because a dragon's got to live somewhere).  A daily - well, week-day-ly - gag cartoon about Red the Fire Dragon, living in a shared house in the suburbs, with his human friend, TET and his two pets, Grrr Dog and Cool Froyd the cat. Back then I had about 100 cartoons sketched out, with eleven completely digitally inked and coloured.  As of writing this, I haven't yet skipped a day of my schedule, and am seven toons short of an even 200 sketched out, with 31 fully inked and coloured. Actually, it's 33 but I only publish one full colour toon each week, so I have two in the wings. I'm not planning on doing daily toons forever. My goal is to hit 366 so I have enough to fill a daily desk calendar, should I decide to sell one. Currently you can buy individual prints of my finished toons in my Resident Dragon Store . When I have enough finished toons I will be compiling them into...

B ack in October of 2023 I used Prome AI's Sketch Rendering feature to color a 23 year old rough pen sketch I did of a princess watching butterflies, sitting next to a waterfall in the forest. You can read more about that in my previous article,  The Princess' Butterflies - Using an AI Art Generator to Color and Enhance a 23 Year Old Rough Pen Sketch The three images I used to create my final image (bottom right). Notice how closely the AI has followed my line art sketch (top left) but in the first image (top right) has misinterpreted the waterfall as some kind of large tree stump. Prome's render of the artwork was pretty good but I did end up creating a composite image myself from two of the best renders, to get my final image. Since then AI Image to Video has come a long way, particularly when it comes to creating animation from artwork and maintaining the art style for the whole generation. AI still does much better with turning photographic images to video but I found ...

I'm calling this, 'Stand Up Comedian'. Image by Leonardo.ai and TET. I  consider myself to be a successful working artist. I use the term 'working' quite loosely but basically what I mean is I work for myself, I earn money from my art or knowledge, and most of my time I can create art that interests me. I've never been motivated to be a 'career' artist. By that I mean, an artist whose work is displayed in all the top galleries, and that the super rich buy as more of an investment for wealth, than a love of art. Which is not to say these investors don't love art but when you're buying a single artwork for thousands, or even millions, of dollars, you're generally looking for a return on that investment too. That said, I'm not opposed to artists who want that kind of recognition. Certainly, if you're prepared to do the work, in countries like Australia, you can earn a nice passive income off the secondary market. Which means each time yo...