2017 Art and Animals

2017 will be the busiest year yet.  After the last 6 months of 2016 I cannot even anticipate how much more will be asked of me as an artist, a teacher, a mentor, a guide, an art judge, an artist, a conservationist, a naturalist, a role model, a father and grandfather.
After a lengthy meeting today with the Armand Bayou Nature Center I'm looking at a lecture and animal art show featuring a huge exhibition of my animal art sometime late April, early May.  
This month, January, I will be judging the Galveston Winter Art Show and speaking and critiquing.  Next month in February, my students will be excited as we enter into the Visual Arts Scholastic Event and a possible mural of sea life for the Houston Zoo.  As of today, I do not know yet, but maybe I'll be painting a seven foot tall for mermaid for the city of San Marcos.
At HGA I will be in charge of the large African Elephant wall mural that will eventually find its way to the zoo.  Also in February We will have a guest violinist play in my classroom while my advanced students sketch in charcoal and pastel. 
March 2017 is the Museum of Fine Arts Youth Art Show in the Tomball / Spring area of which I am one of three judges and I'm sure it will be an amazing and challenging art show.
The BIG NEWS is our Spring Break SAFARI to NEPAL, land of tigers, rhinos and elephants...not to mention the awesome giant hornbill.  
So I finished the Grant request for my ART CAMP for High School Artists coming this June 2017 and hopefully we get approved to provide an amazing nature and art filled week of experiences for 30 Art students.
I left out all of the little events and happenings because they're are just too many -just know that I am out there in nature and teaching students to love our environment and the animals in it along with the amazing world of art.

Africa Big Five

Okay...so every country has a big five now a days...i know..but Africa has the original Big Five...SO...I wanted to make sure i had a big five Africa collection of portraits/profiles in PENCIL of the Stars of the Show!.  Elephant, Rhino, Lion, Leopard, Buffalo.

Here are the previews of my soon to be colage of the Big Five.

Other news:  National Society of Artists Show is coming in May....i will submit The Lion Queen, PEacock Rainforest, Scattering of Scavengers, Kookaburras possibly.  Texas City Art Festival My inkwork Durer's Dream won a ribbon but disappointingly that peacock painting of mine fails to win anything again.

My school's HGA ARt Show Teachers Choice is over and some happy students won bags of good art supplies.  Next weekend I am escorting THREE MAGICAL AMAZING STUDENTS to the Texas State Visual Arts Scholastic Event in San Antonio Texas.  Workshops and Art...and of course a special trip to the San Antonio Zoo.  

Remember to buy your Hiser Art clothing, ipad and galaxy caess, and tote bags at www.redbubble.com  and search Doug Hiser.

Ten Secrets of Love has been a good addition to my collection of published books and has all five star reviews.  You can get it on Amazon.com.

Thanks for following, and countdown to Tanzania this summer.....

Spring Art is Here! Africa looms on the Horizon

That's right!   We've left Winter in the tear view mirror.  My students have conquered their UIL V.A.S.E. ART competition with 35 GOLD medals and 3 State medals...And on April 23rd We'll be in San Antonio for Texas State Visual Arts Scholastic Event!   Should be awesome!

I have been busy to with commissions, Spring Art show judging and competing, Author and Artist Speaking engagements, and working on our Mountain Lion Life size sculpture --and the start of the four Murals for History, Literature, Science and Math.

The HGA Spring Art competition among all art students is this month too!  With many great art prizes!! 

Two big art shows are coming up:  The Mainland Texas City Art Festival and the National Society of Artists Show at the San Luis in Galveston.  The pieces I have ready to show are:  That leviathan Peacock Rain forest Painting, The ink of "Durer's Dream" and the ink of "Lion Queen", The painting of vultures in Africa known as Scattering of Scavengers" and my detailed ink of the Rhino  in Namibia....So maybe if i am lucky i can snatch a ribbon or two....fingers crossed.....

And then in May the graduation of many of my loved senior Art students!  Followed by the week long TexArt Wildlife Worksop at Schreiner University in Kerrville, Texas  featuring Banovich and McGuirre and others from the Society of Animal Artists.

I am still promoting and getting five star reviews from my 2016 book: Ten Secrets of Love available on Amazon.com.  

Summer is not far away and looking forward to traveling back to Africa -this time to Tanzania.....Keep creating and reading!

Mid-Winter and Spring Art 2016

Gayln and I have had numerous excursions photographing birds and hiking the nature trails and wildlife refuges --the only places left where animals can survive in our crowded Houston Galveston development hell of an area with spreading concrete like a virus and the elimination of trees and vegetation like a giant razor shaving the land.  We are so looking forward to returning to Africa, Tanzania, this summer.

We have had amazing experiences with our native birds, spoonbills, pelicans, ospreys, and kingfishers to name a few but my favorite encounter was a few weeks ago when we surprised a couple of HUGE shaggy Feral Wild Boars in the Brazoria Wildlife Refuge.  It was like spotting prehistoric mammals.  Such a surreal experience to look into the clearing about fifty yards away and see those monsters.  the ran quickly into the shrubs and disappeared almost as if they were ghosts from the ice age.

My new 2016 book, TEN SECRETS OF LOVE available on Amazon.com is getting great reviews and I am so glad it finally made it into print after a long up and down campaign over theme and many cover changes.  If you have read it or any of my other books I want to thank you and I appreciate your readership.  Raise your hand if you have read all of my books.  Oh, I see Gayln in the back there raising her hand.

2015 was an amazing year especially with the arrival of my grand baby, Finlie Faith.  She is growing like a tadpole losing her tail and crawling around getting ready to walk!

The ON THE WING Art Show in Galveston was a success with my Kookaburras painting and Reddish Egret making the gallery and the egret SOLD.  Finished work on a couple of commissions and painted a Sci-Fi book Cover just released on Amazon.

The Conroe Art Show is coming in March and I am honored to have been selected to Judge the Art Show.  It is a big responsibility and I promise to do my best to reward the hard work of the many artists that are competing.  Later in the Spring I look forward to entering my Peacock painting into a few shows-hoping for the best.  

In two weeks the most exciting event is almost here: Visual Arts Scholastic Event VASE, where 40 of my students will be trying to win Gold medals for their hard work on their art projects!  I am so EXCITED for them!  It is a BIG day in their lives and the sense of accomplishment carries forward giving them confidence to try new things and stretch their abilities in life!

There is so many other events and shows on the agenda but let's just worry about them as they come ...looking forward to a busy and productive next two months! 

NEW BOOK 10 Secrets of Love

"This book is sweet and magical and creates a pensive teardrop or a wistful smile while delivering your heart and soul into realms of attraction and allure and revealing the Ten Secrets of Love."  

I open the new year, 2016,  with my new book TEN SECRETS OF LOVE, and not only does this book contain stories of a variety of types of love but also I have included some of my idea illustrations for each section.  It is not a massive gigantic huge month long read---more like a whisper each night before you go to bed of sweet slices of magic.  

Each chapter is a fresh exploration, a journey into a new exotic realm where sometimes life is too real or maybe when you think it is so tangible or pedestrian the inexplicable appears like in some dream where water pours from the cracks in an ancient tree.  Writing these pieces of "love" I delved down into myself and my life's past or maybe sometimes into my life's future to spin and contort and twist and dig and unearth all kinds of emotions I forgot about or was yet to discover.  Sounds contradictory, maybe so, but then so is love.  

The birds on the cover represent each different love that I discovered.  A bird flies into your life in an instant, you look up and there he is, sitting on a branch right in front of you, all colorful and splendid with song and beauty--"love" is like this too.  Some birds keep coming back each day, some birds you only see one time in your entire life.  So, am I saying love is like birds?  Or maybe birds represent love?  Does love migrate with the seasons?  Is this book about birds?  Well, no, but love is about flight and secret gardens and unexpected encounters and beauty and song.

The Honey Bee Girl, my Amazon bestseller, is a love story.  Montana Mist, my Amazon bestseller, is a love story.  Ten Secrets of Love is an exploration into metaphors of love.  I write Sci-Fi, Crow Canyon, and Fantasy, Cavern of the Eggstone, and Poetry, Lost Oasis and dark comedic thrillers, The Texas Sugar Pussy Kat Murders, and YA action adventure fantasy, The Midnight Jungle, but it seems love appeals to all people, no matter your age or occupation.  We all have experienced love in some form in our lives.  It is common and it is rare. Ten secrets, you ask me?  Heck, there are probably 100 secrets, but that book is too long.  

So i sat down many times and wrote these secrets into simple complex contraptions of words and emotions to touch you in some forgotten or yet to be experienced way.  Hold my hand and take a short journey into a place that might make you smile or cry or remember but i know it will make you feel something familiar...something like the mystery of love.
Read a copy of my newest book Ten Secrets of Love and write me a review on amazon.  thanks for reading my words. Doug Hiser

http://www.amazon.com/Ten-Secrets-Love-Doug-Hiser/dp/1517025656/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451830395&sr=1-1&keywords=doug+hiser