Sweet River Studios

This has to be considered an all time great finger food.  If you haven't made one I highly recommend them.  Also, its super versatile. You can add filling and spices you want to it or change the entire thing. I usually make these around Christmas just because its still good at room temperature. Not all of my people arrive at Christmas at the same time and we all usually just wonder about nibbling at what's on the table. These are fairly easy to make once you get the rolling method down and they freeze great.  So if you make extra or just decide to keep them all to yourself instead of giving them away for free to people you may or may not really like, you can freeze them for later. When I worked, I would layout a roll before going to work and it was defrosted by the time we got home. Then we just had to heat it up. I've often wanted to change things up a bit but rarely do but you can make one with  mushrooms and caramelized onions with cheese,...

This painting came together fairly easily. I'm always leery of painting black animals. It can be really hard to distinguish the actual shape of the animal. All that black can lead to just one giant blob of mystery. But I made sure to leave a white highlight down the shoulder and arm which I think really helped. I added some gray/white to the body area and flicked my brush to leave the directional lines which took on the fur. I added gray to the face and white to the arm, head, chest to highlight the black fur. Since gorilla's live in the jungle, I added some tree shapes and greens to the background.

Well, I haven't painted any animals for a few weeks now. I got hung up and couldn't decide a few things. I decided to add a lowland gorilla and maybe a manatee but I haven't decided.  I did discover a cute bird called a Quetzal and I'm thinking I'll add that to the border but back to the harpy eagle. Since this bird lives in the deep jungle, I went for the darkest shade of green I had and painted the background and a branch and let this layer dry. I used gray, white and a dark midnight blue to initially rough in the bird. Finally, I used black to darken areas and white for additional highlighting.  I also added some leaf shapes and squiggly yellow. Not sure why but it needed something to break up all that green and yellow peaks through green in the jungle and it just seemed to work out. Its about the animal not the backgrounds and I think this eagle turned out pretty good.