Digital Art and Photography by John Corney

Leaning Tower of Pizza — A Pun Born on the Road to the Pisa Airport

2026-09-18T15:02:23.687-07:00

I spent last week in the La Spezia/Cinque Terre region of Italy on a Road Scholar hiking trip — the kind of trip where your legs ache pleasantly every evening and you eat more focaccia than is strictly necessary. On the drive to the Pisa airport at the end of the week, someone mentioned we'd be flying out near the Leaning Tower, and it struck me: to my ear, "Pisa" sounds exactly like "pizza." I'm sure any actual Italian speaker would hear a clear difference, but mine apparently isn't tuned finely enough to catch it.

The pun wrote itself from there.

Leaning Tower of Pizza — Funny Food Pun Illustration

Stacked pepperoni slices standing in for stone arches, mozzarella dripping like mortar between the levels, and the whole thing tilting at the same improbable angle as the real tower — built with AI assistance, once the idea had lodged itself firmly enough in my head that I had to see it through.

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Leaning Tower of Pizza on Redbubble

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The Farmers Queen Street Santa — An Auckland Christmas Icon

2026-09-14T14:49:11.795-07:00

The Queen Street Santa is one of those pieces of Auckland Christmas iconography that's hard to explain to anyone who didn't grow up seeing it. Standing 18 metres tall, the statue's history is more layered than most people realise: it started life on the original Farmers building at the corner of Hobson and Wyndham Streets in 1960, moved briefly to the Manukau City Shopping Centre in the early '90s, then settled onto the Whitcoulls building on Queen Street, where it stood through the 1990s and 2000s — which is where I photographed it in January 2010, in the photo below.

Farmers itself later moved back into that same Queen Street building in 2020, and the giant Santa went back up that Christmas along with them. As far as I can tell, though, it hasn't reappeared since — 2020 seems to be its last confirmed outing, which fits with what a lot of older Kiwis have told me: they remember it fondly, but suspect it's gone for good.

The Farmers Santa — Queen Street Auckland Christmas Landmark

I put together a second version of this one specifically for apparel and stickers — background removed, with festive sparkle, lights, and gift boxes added around the statue for a more decorative, greeting-card feel.

Auckland Santa Statue — Festive Christmas Design

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Both versions are available at my Redbubble shop across the full product range, and are part of my Kiwiana and Christmas collections.

Browse the Kiwiana Collection

Browse the Christmas Collection

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Argos, the Most Faithful Dog in Literature

2026-08-17T15:06:49.656-07:00

I've been listening to the Audible edition of The Odyssey lately, and the scene where Odysseus returns home after twenty years, disguised as a beggar, and is recognized by no one except his elderly dog Argos, struck me as exactly the kind of moment worth illustrating. It's one of the most quietly devastating passages in the whole poem — and it turned into a small series celebrating the loyalty of dogs, ancient and otherwise.

Argos Recognizes Odysseus — The Odyssey Illustration
The reunion scene itself — unrecognized by his own household, Odysseus is known instantly by the dog who waited twenty years for him.

Loyal Dog Greek Mythology Art — Argos Ever Faithful and True
A more decorative take on the same idea — olive branches, an amphora painted with a sailing ship, and a banner celebrating the quality Argos has come to represent.

Dog Lover Gift — I Love Argos
Same composition, different banner — a straightforward tribute for anyone whose own dog earns the same devotion Argos gave Odysseus.

Available on Redbubble

All three pieces are available at my Redbubble shop across the full product range — apparel, stickers, art prints, mugs, and more — and are part of the Dog Lover Gifts collection.

Browse the Dog Lover Gifts Collection

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Six More Audubon Birds in Arts & Crafts Frames — Owls, an Extinct Pigeon, and a Mystery Eagle

2026-08-14T09:30:46.838-07:00

Six more from the Audubon Arts & Crafts series — the Audubon plates, which are in the public domain, are courtesy of the John James Audubon Center at Mill Grove, Montgomery County Audubon Collection, and Zebra Publishing. I framed them in new decorative Arts & Crafts borders. This batch turned up some of the more interesting historical footnotes so far: a genuine ornithological mystery, an extinct species, and a scientific name that's since been reassigned to an entirely different bird.

Barred Owl — Audubon Arts & Crafts Bird Print
Plate 46, No. 10. Common name unchanged, but Audubon's scientific name (Strix nebulosa) now belongs to the Great Gray Owl; the Barred Owl's correct modern name is Strix varia.

Chestnut-Sided Warbler — Audubon Arts & Crafts Bird Print
Plate 59, No. 12. Common name unchanged; modern scientific name is Setophaga pensylvanica.

Great Horned Owl — Audubon Arts & Crafts Bird Print
Plate 61, No. 13. Common name unchanged; modern scientific name is Bubo virginianus.

Passenger Pigeon — Audubon Arts & Crafts Bird Print
Plate 62, No. 13. Modern scientific name Ectopistes migratorius. Once numbering in the billions, the species is now extinct — the last individual died in captivity in 1914.

Summer Tanager (Summer Red Bird) — Audubon Arts & Crafts Bird Print
Plate 44, No. 9. Now known as the Summer Tanager (Piranga rubra).

Bald Eagle (Bird of Washington) — Audubon Arts & Crafts Bird Print
Plate 43, No. 3. One of Audubon's genuine ornithological mysteries — he described it as a new eagle species, but no specimen has ever been found. Modern consensus holds it was almost certainly a misidentified immature Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus).

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All six pieces are available at my Redbubble shop across the full product range — greeting cards, art prints, throw pillows, notebooks, and more — and are part of the Audubon Birds — Arts & Crafts Edition collection.

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Audubon Birds in Arts & Crafts Frames — A New Collection

2026-08-13T09:28:42.258-07:00

I've started a new series using John James Audubon's original "Birds of America" plates — all long in the public domain — as the foundation for a set of pieces set within ornate, William Morris-inspired Arts & Crafts borders. The bird illustrations themselves are Audubon's own, preserved as he painted them nearly two centuries ago; the decorative framing and background are new. A few of these birds also carry an interesting footnote: Audubon didn't always get his identifications right, and where that's the case, I've noted the modern name alongside his original.

Barn Swallow — Audubon Arts & Crafts Bird Print
Plate 133, No. 35. Still known today by the same name Audubon gave it, Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica).

Hooded Warbler (Selby's Fly Catcher) — Audubon Arts & Crafts Bird Print
Plate 9, No. 2. Now identified as a female Hooded Warbler (Setophaga citrina) — Audubon mistook her for a species distinct from the male.

Pine Warbler (Vigors Vireo) — Audubon Arts & Crafts Bird Print
Plate 30, No. 6. Now identified as a Pine Warbler (Setophaga pinus), despite the "Vireo" in Audubon's original name.

Bald Eagle (White-Headed Eagle) — Audubon Arts & Crafts Bird Print
Plate 31, No. 7. Now known as the Bald Eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus).

Wild Turkey — Audubon Arts & Crafts Bird Print
Plate 1, No. 1 — the very first plate Audubon published. Still known today as the Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallopavo).

Northern Parula (Blue Yellow-Back Warbler) — Audubon Arts & Crafts Bird Print
Plate 15, No. 3. Now known as the Northern Parula (Setophaga americana).

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A Grunge Botanical Collection — Five Painterly Garden Pieces

2026-08-03T12:54:32.492-07:00

Over the past few weeks I've been building out a small collection of botanical pieces using photos taken in my garden here in Irvine, California, (and in one case out on a hiking trail here in SoCal), and using AI assistance to give each one a grunge, painterly treatment — dark, richly textured backgrounds with warm gold light breaking through, turning garden snapshots and trailside finds into something closer to old varnished still-life paintings than straight photography. Here's the full set so far.

Epiphyllum oxypetalum — Queen of the Night, Painterly Botanical Art
A night-blooming cactus that flowers just once or twice a year, for a single night — three blooms at different stages caught in one frame from a night it happened in my garden.

Kangaroo Paw — Painterly Grunge Botanical Art
Australia's velvety-flowered native, grown in my own garden, its stems reaching in different directions the way it actually grows rather than posed into symmetry.

Kalanchoe delagoensis — Mother of Millions, Painterly Grunge Botanical
A Madagascar succulent that earns its dramatic name honestly — a chandelier of drooping coral blooms above tendrils curling like calligraphy against the dark.

Fern Fronds — Painterly Grunge Botanical Art
Delicate, deeply cut fronds from a shady corner of the garden, lit like sunlight finding its way through a forest canopy onto the understory below.

Artichoke Thistle — Painterly Grunge Botanical Art
The one piece in this set that came from a trail rather than the garden — two thistle heads at different stages, caught on a hike here in Irvine.

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All five pieces are available as framed prints, canvas, art prints, and more, and are part of my Fine Art Prints collection at my Redbubble shop.

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A Steindachner's Ebony Tarantula at Crystal Cove

2026-07-29T16:18:46.681-07:00

I crossed paths with this fellow on a hike at Crystal Cove State Park this morning, along the Fenceline trail. I posted it to iNaturalist as soon as I got home, and within a few hours had it confirmed by several people: a male Steindachner's ebony tarantula (Aphonopelma steindachneri).

Turns out the timing wasn't a fluke. Males of this species leave their burrows specifically to search for mates between July and October, so this was a textbook-timed encounter rather than an unusual one — good to actually check that before assuming, since my first instinct was that a July sighting seemed early. After his photo session, I gently nudged him with a stick and he scurried off the trail into the chaparral, safe from being run over by a mountain biker or stomped by an arachnophobic hiker.

Aphonopelma steindachneri is native to the coastal ranges of Southern California and northern Baja California, and it's one of the tarantulas you're genuinely most likely to run into if you spend time hiking the hills around LA or San Diego. Docile, slow-moving, velvet-black or deep brown in color, and considerably more interested in finding a burrow than bothering a hiker. Up till now I have only seen dead tarantulas on the trails. They are harmless despite their size and appearance. If you encounter one, please DO NOT kill it!

Steindachner's Ebony Tarantula — Wild California Spider Photography

I shot this on my Pixel 10 XL, ran it through Topaz Gigapixel to enlarge it, and removed the background in Photoshop so the spider stands entirely on its own — real specimen photography rather than another cartoon Halloween spider.

For the tarantula keepers and naturalists among you who like a proper species ID, I also put together a second version labeled in the style of an old field guide plate — common name and scientific name, presented the way any properly identified specimen ought to be.

Steindachner's Ebony Tarantula — Scientific Specimen Photography

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Wild Photography Version on Redbubble

Specimen Card Version on Redbubble

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Ten Digital Paintings from a Winter Visit to Zion National Park

2026-07-28T15:02:46.112-07:00

Back in January 2006, I spent a winter's day in Zion National Park with some friends. Previously I'd only been there in the summer months, so it was a different experience to see snow dusting the red rocks and icicles hanging from branches. The photographs have sat in my archive for years. Recently I went back through them and reworked ten of my favorites into full painterly interpretations, working with ChatGPT the way a film director works with a cinematographer — directing the composition, the light, and the mood while keeping the actual geology of the place accurate throughout. The sky that day was a flat steely-gray, so the only significant difference to the original photos is the addition of dramatic clouds. If you're a Zion fan, or looking for some dramatic desert southwest art for your home, I hope you find something here that meets your wishes.

Here's the full set.

Zion National Park Juniper — Painterly Winter Landscape
A weathered juniper frames a sandstone spire, its dark twisting branches giving the whole piece a sense of looking through the landscape rather than just at it.

Zion National Park Canyon — Golden Light, Painterly Landscape
A snow-streaked cliff face under a towering, backlit cloud bank, with a dead branch hanging into frame — a detail I liked enough to keep rather than crop out.

Winter Icicles at Zion National Park
A closer, more intimate composition — looking through icicle-laden branches toward the canyon beyond, the ice catching the last of the day's light.

Zion National Park — Winter Sunset, Painterly Landscape
The piece that started this whole series — a snow-dusted canyon and scattered pinyon pine under a sky full of dramatic golden cumulus.

Zion National Park Layered Sandstone — Painterly Winter Landscape
One of the few pieces from the trip without visible snow — all about the rippled, sculptural texture of cross-bedded sandstone rather than cold light on ice.

Zion National Park Sandstone Dome — Painterly Winter Landscape
A great rounded dome of slickrock, snow catching in every crease, with hundreds of small pinyon and juniper scattered across it like a pointillist scatter.

Zion National Park Slickrock Ridge — Painterly Winter Landscape
Layered, stepped sandstone terraces with snow sitting in the shaded folds — that enormous sun-lit cumulus bank does as much storytelling here as the rock itself.

Zion National Park — Golden Winter Canyon, Painterly Landscape
Looking further up the canyon to where the river channel opens into a wide, rocky wash — bare branches up close, layered canyon walls receding into a towering cloud bank.

Zion National Park Virgin River Canyon — Painterly Winter Landscape
A ribbon of moving water threading through the rocky wash, the eye pulled straight up from the river to the snow-streaked summit above.

The Watchman and Virgin River, Zion National Park — Painterly Winter Landscape
One of Zion's most recognizable formations, the river running low with bare cottonwoods and willows stripped down to their winter structure along the bank.

The Full Collection

All ten pieces are part of the larger Desert Southwest collection in my Redbubble shop, alongside earlier work from the Grand Canyon and Joshua Tree.

Browse the Desert Southwest Collection

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Joshua Tree National Park — Painterly Desert Art

2026-07-26T11:26:13.056-07:00

Joshua Trees and Granite Boulders — Painterly Desert Art

Joshua Tree National Park sits in southeastern California, on the border between the Mojave and Colorado deserts, taking its name from the Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia) forests scattered across it. President Franklin D. Roosevelt set the area aside as a national monument in 1936, and it wasn't until the California Desert Protection Act of 1994 that it was elevated to full national park status.

At roughly 790,000 acres, or about 1,235 square miles, the park is slightly larger than the state of Rhode Island, with more than half of that land designated as protected wilderness. Straddling the San Bernardino and Riverside county line, it spans two distinct desert ecosystems shaped largely by elevation — the higher Mojave Desert and the lower Colorado Desert — with the Little San Bernardino Mountains running along its southwestern edge.

For more background, see the Wikipedia entry on Joshua Tree National Park.

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Joshua Trees and Granite Boulders — Painterly Desert Art is available at my Redbubble shop across the full product range — art prints, canvas, greeting cards, throw pillows, notebooks, tote bags, and more. It's particularly striking as a large canvas print or framed art print, where the impasto texture has room to read.

Joshua Trees and Granite Boulders on Redbubble

You can also browse the wider desert southwest collection — canyons, cactus, and painterly landscape work — at my Redbubble shop, KornKob Art. Or search Redbubble for kornkobart (one word).

The Watchman and Virgin River — Painterly Winter Landscape

2026-07-21T11:57:03.599-07:00

The Watchman and Virgin River, Zion National Park — Painterly Winter Landscape — © John Corney

The Watchman is one of Zion National Park's most recognizable formations — the peak that rises up just past the south entrance, often photographed reflected in or framed by the Virgin River as it winds through the valley floor. I photographed this view on the same January 2006 trip as the other winter Zion piece in this collection, with the river running low and the cottonwoods and willows along the bank stripped bare for the season.

I worked this one up with AI assistance into a full painterly interpretation, the same way I've approached the rest of this Zion series — directing the process the way a film director works with a cinematographer, choosing what to carry forward from the original photograph and what to push harder. Here that meant leaning into the warmth of the low winter light against the cool snow on the upper ridgeline, and letting the bare branches along the riverbank keep their stark, linear structure rather than softening them into the background.

The original photograph, taken January 2006.

Winter strips a landscape like this down to its essentials — no leaves to soften the branches, no crowds along the riverbank, just rock, water, and a low sun doing most of the emotional work. Comparing the two, the painterly version pushes the drama in the sky and the warmth in the rock considerably further than the original photograph ever had, but the composition and the bones of the scene are exactly what I found standing there in 2006.

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The Watchman and Virgin River, Zion National Park — Painterly Winter Landscape is available at my Redbubble shop across the full product range — art prints, canvas, greeting cards, throw pillows, notebooks, tote bags, and more.

The Watchman and Virgin River on Redbubble

Zion National Park in Winter: From Photograph to Painting

2026-07-20T16:38:47.302-07:00

Zion National Park — Winter Sunset, Painterly Landscape — © John Corney

On January 23, 2006, I hiked into Zion National Park and found this view — a fresh dusting of snow settled into the folds of the sandstone, the canyon walls layered back into the distance, junipers and pinyon pine clinging to the rock at every angle the terrain would allow. Winter in Zion has a different character than the more commonly photographed summer version of the park: quieter, starker, the color muted under an overcast sky instead of blazing under desert sun.

This photo sat in the archive for years before I came back to it wanting to try something different with it. Rather than just processing the photograph, I worked with AI assistance to create a full painterly reinterpretation — the same way I've approached a few other pieces in this collection. I think of it the way a film director works with a cinematographer: I set the vision, chose what to preserve from the original and what to push further — the drama in the clouds, the warmth of the winter light on the sandstone, the texture in the rock — and directed the result until it matched what I had in mind.

The original photograph, taken January 23, 2006 — © John Corney

What strikes me putting the two side by side is how much of the original is still doing the work in the painterly version — the same peak on the left, the same layered ridgeline receding into the distance, the same scattered conifers holding onto the rock. The interpretation pushed the drama of the sky and warmed the light considerably, but the bones of the composition are exactly what I found standing there in the snow in 2006.

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Zion National Park — Winter Sunset, Painterly Landscape is available at my Redbubble shop across the full product range — art prints, canvas, greeting cards, throw pillows, notebooks, tote bags, and more.

Zion National Park on Redbubble

From Photograph to Painting: A Grand Canyon Transformation

2026-07-19T11:57:44.433-07:00

Every so often a photo sits in the archive for years before it tells me what it wants to become. This one did.

I took the original photograph on a 2017 trip to the Grand Canyon — a fairly straightforward shot of the South Rim, a lone pine holding its ground at the edge, the canyon doing what the canyon does in the distance. Good light, decent composition, nothing wrong with it as a photograph. But it sat there, and eventually I came back to it wanting something different: not a document of the place, but an impression of it.

The original 2017 photograph — straightforward, well-lit, unretouched beyond basic processing.

The transformation happened entirely in traditional digital darkroom software — no AI involved, since this predates that whole conversation by several years. I worked through Lightroom for the initial raw processing, Photoshop for compositing and color work, and Topaz Studio for the painterly stylization that gives the canyon walls that layered, almost oil-on-canvas texture.

Grand Canyon Rim — Painterly Landscape — © John Corney 2017

What strikes me looking at the two side by side now, years later, is how much the second version relies on the first. Every decision in the painterly rendition — where the color intensifies, where the shadows go darker, how the pine reads against the canyon — is still anchored to what was actually there. It's not invention so much as emphasis: pulling forward what the eye felt standing at the rim, rather than only what the camera recorded.

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Grand Canyon Rim — Painterly Landscape is available at my Redbubble shop across the full product range — art prints, canvas, greeting cards, throw pillows, notebooks, tote bags, and more. It makes a striking statement piece for a study, office, or anywhere with wall space that can handle some scale.

Grand Canyon Rim on Redbubble

Faces of Pasifika 2007 — A Day at Auckland's Pacific Festival

2026-07-14T15:34:43.237-07:00

The 15th anniversary Pasifika Festival poster — a collage of the Pacific cultures the festival celebrates.

On Saturday 10 March 2007, I spent the day at the Pasifika Festival at Western Springs Park in Auckland. It was the festival's 15th year — an annual celebration of Pacific Island cultures that has been part of Auckland's calendar since 1993, and which typically draws crowds of well over 100,000 across the day. Nine Pacific villages are traditionally represented — Samoa, Tonga, the Cook Islands, Niue, Fiji, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Kiribati and Tahiti — with music, dance, food, arts, and craft from each community sharing the same park for the day.

I usually visit New Zealand earlier in February, but in 2007 I was there in March and it was the first — and, to date, only — time I've been able to attend Pasifika. I hope to make it back one of these years. But I came away from that single visit with the strong sense that the spirit of the festival lived in its young performers, many of them practising, waiting, laughing, and preparing with genuine excitement to take the stage in front of their whānau and their community.

These are some of the photographs I took that day. The one I took of a young Samoan man waiting to perform has lived on this blog for many years now — that photograph is here. This post gathers a wider set of images from the same afternoon.

Preparing to Perform

Fa'afafine performers from the Samoan Village, waiting before their performance.

The Samoan Village stage that year hosted a fa'afafine dance group. Fa'afafine — literally "in the manner of a woman" — are a traditional third-gender identity in Samoan culture, historically respected and integral to Samoan life for generations. They frequently perform at cultural events, and their presence at Pasifika is part of what makes the Samoan Village so vibrant. The four young performers in this photo were among the group's dancers, gathered together in matching green in the moments before they were called to the stage.

A fa'afafine dancer mid-performance — pure joy in the moment.

And once on the stage, this is what she brought to it. There's no way to fake the expression on this face. She is completely in the moment, and completely happy to be there. This is my favourite image from the whole day.

Traditional Costume and Presence

A young performer in traditional woven costume with beaded detailing and an ornate headpiece.

The craftsmanship in Pacific costume work is genuinely extraordinary — hours of weaving, beading, and construction that give each community's traditional dress its distinct character. This piece uses pandanus weaving with red bead and shell detail, and the elaborate architectural headpiece suggests an occasion piece rather than everyday wear.

A Cook Islands dancer in orange feathered headdress and grass skirt — a moment of stillness in the middle of the performance.

The orange feather headdress and grass skirt are hallmarks of Cook Islands dance costume — vibrant, dramatic, and designed to move. Photographing a dancer in the pause between motions is often more interesting than trying to capture the motion itself; the composure holds so much more than the blur.

A performer in a striking headpiece and traditional tapa cloth costume.

Tapa cloth — made from the bark of the paper mulberry tree, beaten thin and decorated with geometric patterns — is one of the most distinctive traditional textile arts of the Pacific. Different communities have their own tapa-making traditions and pattern vocabularies, and formal costume incorporating tapa carries real cultural weight.

On Stage

Three dancers in yellow and red floral costume — the frangipani flowers around them are an artistic touch that I added. They just seemed appropriate.

This is the only photograph in the set where I made a substantive change to the composition — the falling frangipani flowers around the dancers were added in post-processing rather than being present on the day. I liked the sense of visual celebration it added, though the joy on the middle dancer's face was entirely her own.

A dancer in pink, mid-movement — the whole face composed with the music.

Pacific dance traditions are deeply expressive with the hands — much of the storytelling of a traditional dance is carried in the fingers, the wrists, the angle of the palms. This dancer is clearly deep in that language.

Between Performances

A group of young performers gathered together — the spirit of the day, in a single frame.

This group had just come off their performance and were in that specific mood people get into after doing something they'd been preparing for and doing it well. The red facial markings are traditional face paint that many of the young performers wear as part of their costume — a distinctive visual identity that carries through their group's whole performance.

A festival-goer with a striking traditional-style Polynesian tattoo on his upper arm.

Contemporary Polynesian tattoo work — drawing on the ancient traditions of tatau across the Pacific — has become a significant part of how younger generations carry cultural identity. This piece uses classic elements of Samoan or Tongan-influenced design: the geometric radial patterns, the interlocking motifs, the substantial coverage. Beautiful work.

Faces in the Crowd

An elder in traditional dress, watching from the grass — one of the quietest and most present figures I saw that day.

This portrait is one I've kept coming back to over the years. There's a stillness in the way she watched, a self-possession that felt like the anchor of the whole village around her. Pasifika is a young people's festival in energy — but the elders are what give it its weight.

A young attendee, sitting on the grass with his own soundtrack.

Not every face at Pasifika belongs to a performer. This young man was just at the festival — an attendee taking in the day, apparently with his own music playing alongside the stages. Somebody's brother, cousin, mate. Part of what makes documentary photography of a big cultural event work is remembering that most of the day is in the audience, not on the stage.

A young man with a striking red seed-pod ei katu (necklace).

The bright red seed-pod necklace is a striking piece of adornment — the kind of item that carries meaning as well as visual presence. Ei katu (Cook Islands Māori) and similar necklaces across the Pacific are given, worn, and traded with care; each has a story.

A Note on the Photography

I took all the photographs above with a Canon EOS 20D. I shot in RAW format, which meant every image required post-processing — cropping, exposure and brightness adjustments, sharpening, and resizing were handled using a combination of Adobe Lightroom, Topaz Photo, and Adobe Photoshop. With the single exception of the three dancers with the falling frangipani (where I added the flowers as an artistic touch), the images are documentary — the moment captured is what was there.

Pasifika Festival continues annually at Western Springs Park in Auckland. If you get the chance to attend, take it — and take a camera.

Cool Granny Has Taken Up Flying — The Little Old Lady Collection Grows Again

2026-07-08T12:09:35.641-07:00

Cool Granny in Her Biplane — © John Corney 2026

Our cool granny is back, and she has done something the family has been quietly worried about for a few months now.

She has taken up flying.

A Brief Recap for New Readers

If you're new to the series: she first appeared in a beautifully kept yellow Austin A35 on the corner of Queen Street and K Road in Auckland, waving cheerfully out the driver's window as she went past. That piece was, in its quiet way, a tribute to my own mother, who in her fifties bought her own motor scooter in Whanganui and never looked back — and to every older woman who has ever decided it was finally her turn.

Then she showed up in a pink-and-yellow flame-painted monster truck, waving out the driver's window in exactly the same spirit, but with rather larger tyres. Same silver hair, same coral scarf, same oversized sunglasses. Same little red heart painted on the door, because of course.

Now she has a biplane.

She Has Cleared Herself for Takeoff

The plane is unmistakably hers. Yellow with the same flame accents as the truck, turquoise trim on the engine cowling and wing struts, red hearts painted on the fuselage and the tail rudder, and — my favourite detail — she has kept the enormous off-road tyres from the monster truck days. She is not a woman who abandons a good idea just because she has changed vehicles.

The goggles are pushed up onto her forehead, which suggests she has already been in the air and has now landed — or that she has decided goggles are for people who care about wind in their eyes, and she does not. She is laughing out loud and waving with her free hand while the other stays on the controls. The propeller is a blur of motion. Somewhere behind her, the ground is receding at what is presumably an inadvisable rate.

Whoever taught her to fly is either very proud or has changed their phone number.

Why She Keeps Doing This

The whole point of the collection is that she keeps doing this. Every piece so far — the A35, the monster truck, now the biplane — is the same woman, moving up. She isn't just refusing to slow down; she's actively accelerating. The joke of the series is that whatever the family thought she'd calm down to enjoy in her later years, she's decided instead to try something more ambitious.

My own mother didn't fly a biplane. She rode a motor scooter through the Whanganui streets. But the impulse is the same one, and the impulse is what the whole collection is really about: the quiet, unapologetic decision, made somewhere in the middle of a life, that from now on she was going to do things because she wanted to.

The biplane is what that decision looks like when you extend it out for another twenty years.

The Wider Collection

The current cel-shaded era — Austin A35, monster truck, biplane — grew out of an earlier body of work I made in a rougher painterly-cartoon style between 2022 and 2025. That earlier collection features the same character riding scooters, skateboarding, jumping horses over canyons, and creating memorable chaos while babysitting the grandchildren. Both eras are still on Redbubble, and both have their fans. If you'd like a retrospective look at where the whole thing started, the original Cool Granny Collection is still available.

Available on Redbubble

Cool Granny in Her Biplane is available at my Redbubble shop across the full product range — greeting cards, t-shirts, tote bags, mugs, stickers, art prints, throw pillows, notebooks, and more. It makes a perfect card for a beloved grandmother, mother, aunt, or friend on a birthday — particularly one who has recently taken up something the rest of the family finds mildly alarming.

Cool Granny in Her Biplane on Redbubble

You can also browse the growing Little Old Lady collection — the Austin A35, the monster truck, the biplane, and whatever she takes up next — at my Redbubble shop, KornKob Art. Or search Redbubble for kornkobart (one word).

Three Hearts in Shadow — A Sepia Fine Art Photograph from Hollyhock House

2026-07-05T15:50:47.564-07:00

Three Hearts in Shadow — Hollyhock House, Los Angeles. © John Corney

Some photographs surprise you by turning out to be about something quite different from what you thought you were photographing. This is one of those.

The Afternoon at Hollyhock House

I was visiting Frank Lloyd Wright's Hollyhock House in East Hollywood on a bright, still afternoon in 2017, camera in hand, doing what most visitors do — trying to capture the extraordinary modernist geometry of the building itself. Hollyhock House was Wright's first Los Angeles commission, built between 1919 and 1921 for the oil heiress and arts patron Aline Barnsdall on Olive Hill, the site now known as Barnsdall Art Park. It's a genuinely important building — the first UNESCO World Heritage Site in Los Angeles, inscribed in 2019 as part of "The 20th-Century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright" — and it has that instantly recognisable Wright sensibility: clean rectilinear frames of concrete, sharp shafts of light, a rigorous marriage of building and Southern Californian sky.

What I hadn't planned to photograph was three small wrought-iron chairs.

They were arranged in one of the terraces off the courtyard — three delicate, ornate, ice-cream-parlour-style chairs with heart-shaped backs, sitting empty in a shaft of hard afternoon sun. They weren't Wright's design at all. They looked like they might have wandered in from a different decade, or a different building entirely — chairs that would have suited a Victorian tea garden more naturally than a modernist masterpiece. But there they were, and the sun was doing something remarkable with them.

The Shadows Were the Real Subject

Because those hearts on the chair backs, in that hard sunlight, were throwing beautifully articulated heart-shaped shadows along the ground. Three round seat shadows sitting in a row, and behind each seat shadow, an elegant traced silhouette of the whole chair — the twisted iron legs, the ornate scrollwork, and at the top of each shadow, an unmistakable heart. It was as if the chairs had drawn themselves a second time on the floor, in a more delicate hand, and had left the drawings there for anyone to notice.

Here's the original photograph I took, looking through Wright's stark concrete frame into that sunlit terrace:

The original photograph — three heart-back chairs framed by Wright's architecture at Hollyhock House.

It's a decent architectural photograph. The Wright framing does what Wright framings do — it turns the world outside into a composed image, with the modernist geometry acting as a proscenium arch around a small stage. And the chairs and their shadows are there, doing their quiet work, in the middle of it all.

But something about the piece kept nagging at me long after I got home.

A Sense of Something Wistful

The chairs were empty. Three chairs, three heart-backs, three shadows — and no one sitting on them. Whatever conversations or romances or afternoons they had once held, or might have held, or might still hold in some other afternoon, weren't happening now. The scene was quietly waiting.

I couldn't quite put the feeling into a word. It wasn't sadness exactly — the light was too golden, the shadows too beautiful, the whole tableau too composed. It wasn't nostalgia either — I had no personal history with those chairs; I'd never sat in them, never known anyone who had. What I was feeling was closer to a kind of soft, sweet longing for something that hadn't happened. The Portuguese have a word for this, saudade. The Germans have Sehnsucht. In English we make do with "wistfulness," which is a fine word but doesn't quite reach it. The feeling of being tenderly moved by something that hasn't occurred.

The Sepia Treatment

When I sat down to work with the image, I decided the piece wanted to be lifted out of the architectural context altogether. Wright's frame is beautiful, but it anchors the photograph to a specific place and a specific afternoon in 2017. What I actually wanted was for the piece to feel more untethered from time — closer to a memory than to a record.

So I cropped in tight on the chairs and their shadows, and I converted the image to warm sepia. Sepia, historically, is what photographs become as they age — the silver in old prints slowly oxidises to warm brown tones, and generations of viewers have come to read that colour as "past." A sepia photograph looks like memory itself, even when it's newly made. That was the register I wanted the piece to hold.

The final piece has the mood I was originally reaching for — three empty chairs in a shaft of quiet warm light, three heart-shadows waiting on the floor, and no way to tell what year it is, or whose afternoon this was, or whether the lovers are just arriving or just left.

Bring the Wistfulness Home

Three Hearts in Shadow is available at my Redbubble shop as fine art prints, framed prints, canvas prints, posters, notebooks, and greeting cards. It's not a piece for every room — sepia work reads best in quiet, thoughtful spaces where its contemplative mood has room to breathe. But in the right room — a study, a bedroom, a hallway with soft warm lighting, a reading corner — it holds its own quiet weather.

It also makes an unusually thoughtful card. There isn't an obvious category on a shop rack for a wistful sepia photograph, which is part of why sending one feels considered rather than routine.

Three Hearts in Shadow on Redbubble

You can find all my work at my Redbubble shop, KornKob Art — or search Redbubble for kornkobart (one word).

2026-07-04T13:33:15.863-07:00

Cool Granny in Her Austin A35 — © John Corney 2026

This one has a real backstory, and I'd like to tell it properly.

An Auckland Sighting

On one of my annual visits home to New Zealand, I was walking through central Auckland — at the corner of Queen Street and Karangahape Road (K Road, as everyone calls it) — when a small yellow car went past me and stopped me mid-stride. It was a beautifully kept Austin A35, one of the little British runabouts that were everywhere in New Zealand when I was growing up in the fifties and sixties. Driving it was a woman of a certain age with the confident bearing of someone who had been driving that same car, or one like it, for decades. She looked entirely at home behind the wheel. She belonged to the car and the car belonged to her, and neither of them was in any hurry to change.

If you know Auckland, that particular corner will register: Queen Street runs down the spine of the city, and K Road is its long-established bohemian cross-street, with a history of vintage shops, live music venues, characterful old buildings and home to Auckland's more colourful nightlife. A vintage yellow Austin A35 turning that corner, driven by a woman who looked like she belonged in it, was almost too perfect a moment — the car, the driver, and the location all speaking the same language.

I got the photograph before she drove off. Here's the car (with the driver removed for privacy, since I didn't have the chance to ask her):

The Austin A35 at the corner of Queen Street and K Road, Auckland — the real car that inspired the illustration.

The Austin A35 was produced from 1956 to 1959, right around when I was born, and part of a whole generation of small, sensible, affordable British cars that populated post-war New Zealand roads and became many families' first vehicle. They were friendly little things — you can see it in the shape, the rounded headlights, the vertical grille, the sense that the whole car might be smiling at you. They aged well too, which is why the surviving A35s tend to be beloved. Nobody keeps an Austin A35 running in 2026 by accident. Someone loves that car.

Why the Sighting Mattered

The reason the moment stayed with me is that the woman in the driver's seat reminded me of my mother.

My mother, Elva, lived most of her life in Whanganui, spelled "Wanganui" when I was growing up there. She had nine children, and she raised us in the way women of her generation and place raised families — mostly on her own energy, without a great deal of fuss, and without the option of putting her own preferences first for a very long time. When the youngest of us was grown and gone, and she was well into her fifties, she made a decision my father was not entirely comfortable with: she bought her own motor scooter — a Suzuki — so she could commute to work independently. He wasn't sure this was quite proper for a woman her age. She was sure enough for both of them. She rode it, and enjoyed it, and never looked back.

The woman in the Austin A35 that morning on K Road had the same air. Not defiant exactly — she wasn't proving a point to anyone — just entirely, unapologetically at ease in her own life. Driving her own car, going her own places, on her own schedule. That look is one I recognise. It's the look my mother had, in a different vehicle, in a different decade, in a different town.

From Photograph to Illustration

I decided to make her a piece from this photo to be part of my "Little Old Lady" collection. Not a portrait of her — I never spoke to the actual woman, and I don't know who she was — but a cartoon that would try to capture the whole spirit of the moment. The car became my starting point: same buttery yellow, same friendly rounded shape, same chrome grille. Then I imagined the driver as the archetype she seemed to be: silver hair caught in the wind, coral scarf trailing behind, oversized sunglasses, laughing, waving to whoever she's just left in her rear-view mirror. I added a small red heart on the side of the car, because it seemed like the kind of thing that woman would have painted on hers.

The result is Cool Granny in Her Austin A35. It's not a portrait; it's a tribute. To one particular woman I saw for about fifteen seconds on K Road. To my mother in her fifties on her Suzuki in Whanganui. To every older woman who has ever decided it was finally her turn.

The Little Old Lady Collection

This piece joins my ongoing Little Old Lady collection on Redbubble, which began with an earlier illustration of a cool granny on a skateboard. Different vehicle, same spirit. The collection is meant as a small, cheerful, ongoing tribute to older women who refuse to slow down, dress boringly, or ask permission — the ones whose second acts turn out to be at least as interesting as the first.

Available on Redbubble

Cool Granny in Her Austin A35 is available at my Redbubble shop across the full product range — greeting cards, t-shirts, tote bags, mugs, stickers, art prints, throw pillows, notebooks, and more. It makes a perfect card for a beloved grandmother, mother, aunt, or friend on a birthday or milestone. It's also a fine gift for anyone who intends to grow into exactly this sort of older woman herself.

Cool Granny in Her Austin A35 on Redbubble

You can browse the full Little Old Lady collection, and everything else, at my Redbubble shop, KornKob Art — or search Redbubble for kornkobart (one path).

Before and After: Two Joshua Tree Photographs, Two Painterly Reworkings

2026-06-30T18:02:28.538-07:00

I want to try something a little different in this post — a working walk-through of how two of my Joshua Tree photographs from April of 2011 became two of my newest painterly artworks on Redbubble. Same compositions, same landscape, same afternoon in the Mojave. Very different final pieces.

The Raw Photographs

Both photographs were taken on a single afternoon trip to Joshua Tree National Park, shot in Canon raw (.CR2) format on my Canon EOS. Raw files are, as any photographer knows, deliberately flat — they carry the maximum amount of information the sensor recorded, without any of the punchy contrast, saturation, or sharpening that a JPEG would apply automatically in-camera. That flatness is a feature: it gives the photographer the widest possible latitude to make choices in post-processing. But it also means a raw file, straight out of the camera, doesn't look like the scene the eye remembers. It looks like the scene the sensor saw, drained of atmosphere.

Here are the two raw captures, converted to standard image files with no processing beyond the raw conversion itself.

The original photograph — Joshua Tree granite formation, midday.

The original photograph — dead juniper among the boulders.

These are considered photographs — clean composition, careful framing, and in the case of the juniper piece the twisted dark form of the tree does real graphic work against the pale rock, with the yucca serving as a right-side counterweight and the mountains anchoring the horizon behind. But looking at them next to the actual experience of standing in that landscape, something is still missing. The Mojave doesn't feel flat and even. It feels like heat, and geological time, and colour. That's what I wanted the final pieces to hold on to.

The Painterly Reworkings

Rather than process the raw files in the usual photographic direction — bumping contrast, warming the whites, deepening the shadows toward a polished landscape photograph — I decided to take these two in a different direction entirely. I wanted painterly renderings: pieces that would sit closer to the tradition of American desert painting than to the tradition of desert photography. Thicker in texture. Warmer in hour. Heavier in atmosphere.

Here are the two artworks that resulted, both now available on Redbubble.

Joshua Trees and Granite Boulders at Sunset — © John Corney 2026

Joshua Tree Desert at Golden Hour — © John Corney 2026

What Changed and Why

The compositions are almost exactly the same as the source photographs — same boulder, same juniper, same yucca, same mountains in the distance. What changed is everything to do with atmosphere: the time of day shifted from noon to a low golden hour, the sky deepened from a friendly midday blue to a richer teal filled with towering sunset-lit cumulus, the rocks picked up the warm apricot glow that granite catches in late light, and the whole surface was worked in thick impasto brushwork rather than the smooth continuous tones of a photograph.

Neither version is more "true" than the other, exactly. The original photographs are true to the sensor. The painterly versions are truer to how the desert feels — the heat radiating off the rock, the way the light in Joshua Tree is heavier and more particular than the light anywhere else in California. Both are legitimate, and both belong on someone's wall for different reasons. But the painterly versions are the ones I've come back to, and the ones I've decided to sell as prints.

A Note on Process

These painterly reworkings were made with the assistance of ChatGPT, an AI image tool, working from my original photographs and my art direction. This is the same collaborative process I've been using for several of my recent digital works: I was there in the desert, I made the photographs, and I then directed the painterly rendering through a series of careful prompts specifying palette, hour, brushwork, and atmosphere. ChatGPT is the medium; the eye and the intent are mine.

I think of it the way a film director thinks of working with a cinematographer. I knew exactly what I wanted the final pieces to feel like. AI, in this case, is the collaborator that could render what I had in mind. If that framing is new to you and you'd like to think about it a bit, that's fair — many working artists are still finding the right relationship with these tools. My own position is that when the photograph is genuinely mine and the artistic direction is genuinely mine, using AI to render the finished style is one legitimate way of making a piece, alongside every other. Full transparency on how the work is made feels like the right way to invite people into that conversation.

Available as Prints on Redbubble

Both painterly pieces are available at my Redbubble shop across the full product range — canvas prints, framed art prints, posters, throw pillows, and more. The impasto texture reads particularly well as a large canvas, where the "brushwork" gets room to breathe.

Joshua Tree Desert at Golden Hour Joshua Trees and Granite Boulders at Sunset

The two are companions to each other and would hang beautifully as a pair — both taken on the same afternoon, both rendered in the same painterly hour, both parts of the same Mojave story.

You can find all my work at my Redbubble shop, KornKob Art — or search Redbubble for kornkobart (one word).

St Sebastian and the Arrows of Love — A Caravaggio-Style Reimagining

2026-06-29T12:16:50.251-07:00

St Sebastian and the Arrows of Love — © John Corney

This is one of the more ambitious pieces I've made: a reimagining of one of the most famous figures in Western art, in the manner of one of its greatest painters, with a single substitution that changes what the whole picture means.

St Sebastian, in Brief

The story most viewers will half-remember: St Sebastian was a Roman officer who secretly converted to Christianity in the third century. When his faith was discovered, the Emperor Diocletian ordered him tied to a column and shot full of arrows by his own archers. He miraculously survived that first attempt, was nursed back to health, and was eventually clubbed to death for continuing to preach. The arrows, then, are the moment everyone paints — the bound saint, the multiple wounds, the gaze traditionally turned upward in suffering and faith.

For five hundred years, Sebastian has been one of the most-painted figures in European art. Mantegna painted him, and Botticelli, and El Greco, and Guido Reni, and Caravaggio's own circle. The image has a particular visual grammar — the beautiful young male body, the bound arms, the arrows piercing flesh, the upward gaze — and it has carried, almost from the beginning, a charge that goes beyond pure religious devotion. Sebastian became, quietly and then less quietly, one of the great coded gay icons of European art history. Generations of viewers have looked at him and seen something the painters' patrons might not have intended them to see.

What I Changed

In my version, the soldiers are gone. The arrows still fly, the column still binds, the wounds still bleed — but the archer up in the corner isn't a Roman with a longbow. It's Cupid, the chubby winged classical god of love, drawing back his small bow with the focused expression of someone who knows exactly what he's doing.

I also made one quieter change. The traditional Sebastian turns his face up to heaven, finding meaning in his suffering through faith. My Sebastian looks down. His head is tilted, his gaze inward and a little resigned. He isn't being martyred for something larger than himself; he's just been hit, again, by love. That downward gaze is what makes him feel less like an icon and more like a person — someone you might recognise.

Together those two changes shift the entire meaning of the picture. The traditional Sebastian suffers for his faith; this Sebastian suffers for love. The arrows are no longer the arrows of persecution but the arrows of desire — the wounds love leaves on the people it strikes, sometimes pleasurably, sometimes painfully, always involuntarily. To be loved is to be hit. To love back is to be hit again.

The idea isn't entirely new. There's a long tradition in art of conflating religious ecstasy with romantic and erotic ecstasy. Bernini's Ecstasy of St Teresa is the most famous example, where an angel pierces the saint's heart with a golden arrow and her face is caught somewhere between divine rapture and something quite a bit more earthly.

Bernini's Ecstasy of St Teresa, in the Church of Santa Maria della Vittoria, Rome.

By giving Cupid the bow that traditionally belongs to Diocletian's archers, I wanted to bring that quiet conflation out into the open. The Sebastian image has always been, in some part, about love. I just thought it was time to say so.

The Baroque Manner

I built the piece in the deep-shadow tenebrist style of Caravaggio and his seventeenth-century followers — a single dramatic light source, deep blacks pressing in from the edges of the frame, warm modelling of skin against darkness, the small still-life touch of a burning lantern on a stone ledge. The technical vocabulary is borrowed, deliberately and openly, from the Italian Baroque. What sits inside that vocabulary, though, is something the Baroque masters wouldn't quite have made.

A note on how the piece was made: this is a digital artwork, created with Gemini through a series of careful prompts that worked through the iconography, composition, lighting, and mood I had in mind. The concept — Sebastian with Cupid as archer, the downward gaze, the Caravaggio manner, the lantern on the ledge — is mine. Gemini was the medium I used to bring the image into being. I think of it the way a film director thinks of working with a cinematographer: I knew exactly what I wanted to see, and I had a remarkable collaborator who could render it.

Bringing It Home

St Sebastian and the Arrows of Love is available at my Redbubble shop as a framed art print, an unframed art print, a canvas, a poster, greeting cards (great for Valentine's or your anniversary), and across the full Redbubble range. It's not a piece for every wall — the Baroque shadow and the wounds are real — but in the right room, particularly one that already leans toward darker, more dramatic art, it has presence. It suits a reading study, a library, a hallway with low warm lighting, or anywhere a room could carry a serious piece with a wry idea inside it.

St Sebastian and the Arrows of Love — Framed Print on Redbubble

You can find all my work at my Redbubble shop, KornKob Art — or search Redbubble for kornkobart (one word).

Book Recommendation for Digital SLR Cameras

2026-05-18T14:11:51.375-07:00

Note: This post was originally published in 2011, when digital SLRs were still relatively new for most amateur photographers and the question of how to learn them was genuinely fresh. The book recommendation below dates from that era. The post is preserved here as a record of a small, lovely coincidence — two friends asking the same question in the same week.

Mallard duck. Photo by Chantal Manseau, taken at her local lake with her new digital SLR.

An interesting coincidence happened this weekend: two friends had recently upgraded to digital SLR cameras, and both asked me — within days of each other — for recommendations on books or resources for learning how to use the features on their new cameras.

Chantal's Email

My friend Chantal emailed me first:

I wanted to ask you about photography... How did you learn? Do you have a good book to recommend? I'm reading through the camera's manual and while it tells me how to use the camera, I need to learn about all the technical terms and how to actually make the best use of my camera. I went to the lake by my house last weekend and took amazing pictures using the portrait, macro, landscape, etc. pre-settings, but didn't adjust anything manually. Check out the green on the duck picture I've attached!

Let me know... thanks! Chantal

The duck picture, of course, is the one at the top of this post. That iridescent green on the male mallard's head is exactly the kind of detail that makes a new photographer realise their camera is capable of more than their phone — and that makes them want to learn how to coax it out deliberately, rather than by happy accident with the preset modes.

Karen, and the Online Course Problem

The week before Chantal's email, my friend Karen and I had been talking about exactly the same question. We'd looked at online photography courses together — there are plenty out there — but the good ones tend to be expensive, and the affordable ones tend to be uneven in quality. Karen was hesitant, understandably, to commit several hundred dollars to a course she might not finish.

So when Chantal's email landed, with the same question framed slightly differently, it pushed me to think about how I actually learned. And the honest answer was: not from online courses or YouTube tutorials (which barely existed back then anyway), but from one particular book that broke things down in a way that finally made manual settings click for me.

The Book That Worked for Me

The book is The BetterPhoto Guide to Digital Photography by Jim Miotke. Of the various books I'd read on digital SLR photography up to that point, this was the one that taught me the most about actually using the manual settings: aperture, shutter speed, ISO, depth of field, exposure compensation, composition, and how to work with available light. It was practical without being condescending, and it assumed you wanted to understand why a setting did what it did, not just which button to press.

The book was published in 2005, which was relatively current in 2011 when I wrote this post. It's now quite dated — and digital camera technology, particularly autofocus systems and ISO performance, has moved on significantly since then. The fundamental concepts (aperture, shutter speed, ISO, composition) are unchanged, though, and a reader picking it up today would still come away understanding the core craft. There are newer books out there I haven't tried; if you'd like a current recommendation as well, that's worth a separate post.

To Karen and Chantal

Good luck to both of you. And be warned: photography can be a wonderfully consuming hobby, the kind that has you up at 5am chasing the light, hiking somewhere uncomfortable in pursuit of a single shot, and saying "just one more frame" to patient friends and family at the end of long afternoons. You may not be entirely the same person on the other side of it. Most of us think that's a good thing.

Disclosure: The link to the book on Amazon above is an affiliate link. If you purchase through it, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.

The Active Seniors Collection: Ollie Grandpa and Heart Granny

2026-05-13T15:06:46.601-07:00

The whole spirit of retirement, done right, is this: after a long working life, you finally have time to do the things you always wanted to. Not everyone slows down when they retire. Some people speed up. Some people get on a skateboard for the first time at 68, or ride a motor scooter through the city just because they've earned the right to, or start showing up to family gatherings in outfits that require sunglasses.

That's the spirit I wanted to capture in my Active Seniors series — a collection of cheerful illustrations celebrating older people who have decided, quite firmly, that they're not done yet.

Meet Ollie Grandpa

Ollie Grandpa is the piece above — a spirited older man catching serious air on his skateboard, silver hair flying, a flower-adorned helmet keeping him sensible, a striped scarf trailing behind him because scarves in the wind are non-negotiable. He's the male counterpart to my long-running Little Old Lady character, and he shares her fundamental orientation to life: whatever happens next, he's going to enjoy it. His name is a small pun — an "ollie" is one of the foundational skateboarding tricks — and the design has become one of my personal favorites in the shop.

Meet Heart Granny

Heart Granny is the same character in a slightly gentler mood — a joyful older woman riding a bright orange motor scooter covered in red hearts, beaming, ready for wherever she's going. She's about spreading affection at a comfortable cruising speed, rather than catching air. Both approaches to later life have their merits.

Part of a Growing Collection

Ollie Grandpa and Heart Granny are part of a wider group of characters I've been developing over the past few years, all sharing the same fundamental idea: older people who refuse to slow down, dress boringly, or accept that certain things aren't for them anymore. The collection started with a cool granny on a skateboard back in 2022, inspired by my own mother's late-life independence in Whanganui, New Zealand, and has grown from there. Since drawing Ollie Grandpa and Heart Granny, the granny herself has continued to evolve — she's now cruising Auckland in a vintage Austin A35 as well, and she keeps trading up to more ambitious vehicles.

Available on Redbubble

Both designs are available at my Redbubble shop as graphic tees, travel mugs, stickers, tote bags, greeting cards, and across the full product range. They make excellent gifts for a beloved grandmother, grandfather, mother, father, or retired friend — or for anyone celebrating the adventurous side of getting older. I'll admit I wear the shirts myself; my neighbours have gotten used to seeing me walk my dog in one or another of them.

Redbubble runs sales periodically throughout the year with site-wide discounts across the shop, so it's always worth checking in when browsing.

👉 Browse the Active Seniors Collection

You can find all my work at my Redbubble shop, KornKob Art — or search Redbubble for kornkobart (one word).

Celebrating Aotearoa New Zealand: My Kiwi Pride Collection

2026-03-19T15:23:33.004-07:00

100% Kiwi — typography design on t-shirt

My mind constantly wanders back to my homeland of New Zealand, especially after a recent trip there with four of my friends from the United States. We spent time in Auckland (including a day trip to Waiheke Island), then flew south to Christchurch and Akaroa, down to Tekapo with its unbelievable dark skies, and on to Queenstown for the last stretch. Ten days is not enough for the South Island, or for New Zealand generally, but it left the same impression it always does: a deepened appreciation for Aotearoa, its unique culture, and its magnificent landscape. My friends all fell for New Zealand and wanted to buy as many souveniers as they could fit in their bags to wear and display once they returned Stateside. Not to mention downing as many glasses of sauvignon blanc, cups of "flat whites", and Afghan biscuits!

While I am already counting down the days until my next visit "way down under," I needed a creative outlet to express that connection right now. Between tending to the native Arthropodium cirratum (renga renga lily) and Pseudopanax ferox (fierce lancewood) flourishing in my California garden, I sat down to design something to help others express their Kiwi pride too.

A Tribute to Aotearoa

My Kiwiana collection on Redbubble is a small, growing set of designs celebrating New Zealand — its icons, its inside jokes, its beloved everyday things. Some are typographic and minimal; others are illustrated and playful. Every one of them is a piece of home. Here are four of my favourites from the collection so far.

100% Kiwi

The one that started the collection. A bold, minimalist typography design that simply says what it says. "Kiwi" — the informal but universally understood term for a New Zealander — is worn without apology or explanation. This design works for anyone who identifies as a Kiwi, whether they're at home in Aotearoa, an expat missing the smell of the bush after rain, or someone who came for a fortnight and left a piece of their heart wandering the sights of the country. It sits beautifully on a crisp white tee, a black hoodie, a travel tote, or as a sticker on the water bottle you'd take on the Tongariro Crossing.

100% Kiwi on Redbubble

Flat White and Chocolate Fish

Flat White and Chocolate Fish — two pieces of Kiwiana in one design

This one packs two pieces of Kiwiana into a single design. The flat white — the espresso-and-steamed-milk coffee widely credited to Wellington or Sydney depending on who you ask, but which New Zealanders will defend as ours until the last barista — sits proudly in a teal cup with a fern-leaf latte art design. Beside it on the saucer, a classic New Zealand favourite, the chocolate fish, with its telltale pink marshmallow filling showing at the tail.

Below the whole scene runs the phrase every Kiwi grew up hearing: "Give that kid a chocolate fish!" — the informal award for a job well done, a good idea, or an answer that hit the mark in class. If you know, you know. This piece is for the Kiwi expat who misses proper coffee, the returning traveller who fell in love with the flat white while they were down there, and anyone who understands that the chocolate fish is a genuine unit of praise.

Flat White and Chocolate Fish on Redbubble

Pukeko

Pukeko — New Zealand's purple swamphen

The pukeko (Porphyrio melanotus) is one of New Zealand's most instantly recognisable native birds — a purple swamphen with deep blue-purple plumage, a bright red bill and frontal shield, and long red legs made for wading. You'll see them all over the North Island's wetlands, roadside ditches, and grassy paddocks, striding around with the slightly comic confidence of a bird that knows it belongs. Unfortunately, if you're driving, you'll see just as many squashed on New Zealand country roads and highways as they love to forage by the roadsides looking for insects that have been stunned or killed by passing cars.

Pukeko have earned a warm place in Kiwi affection — as characters on stamps, in children's books, and on countless bits of Kiwiana merchandise. My design leans into the stylised graphic tradition rather than the naturalistic one, treating the pukeko as an icon rather than a study.

Pukeko on Redbubble

Buzzy Bee (with Mary Lou)

Buzzy Bee with Mary Lou — a tribute to two of New Zealand's most iconic wooden toys

The Buzzy Bee is possibly the most iconic single object in the Kiwiana canon. A wooden pull-along toy with rotating wings that make a satisfying clacking sound as they turn, it was first produced in Auckland in the late 1930s by Maurice Schlesinger, and continued by Hec Ramsey and his brother John from about 1948. It has been in one factory or another ever since. Almost every New Zealander of a certain age had one, or watched a younger sibling drag one across the kitchen floor.

The Buzzy Bee got its international moment when Prince William, then not quite two, was photographed playing with one on the lawn of Government House during the 1983 royal visit — an image that has been part of Buzzy Bee's biography ever since. Almost as beloved is Buzzy's sister toy, the Mary Lou doll, made by the same factory in the same tradition and rarely mentioned without her big brother. My design pairs them together, with a stylized version of Mary Lou riding cheerfully on Buzzy's back, because they belong together in memory as they did in the toy chest.

Buzzy Bee on Redbubble

More from the Kiwiana Collection

The four pieces above are just part of what's in the collection. I've also done a series of three kiwi bird designs featuring the koru pattern, a silver fern design, and — from further back — a tribute to the Sure to Rise Edmonds Cookbook that lived on my mother's kitchen shelf all through my childhood. Between them, they cover a decent stretch of the Kiwiana canon.

Whether you're a proud local, an expat missing home, or a traveller who left a piece of your heart wandering the sights of New Zealand, I hope you find something in the collection that resonates with you.

Explore the Full Kiwiana Collection

You can find all my work at my Redbubble shop, KornKob Art — or search Redbubble for kornkobart (one word).

Beyond the Horizon: Reimagining the Western Sunset

2026-01-14T12:53:00.000-08:00

The image of the "lonely cowboy" is a staple of American art. He's usually riding alone, facing a harsh landscape — a study in solitude and self-reliance. I love those pictures too. But I've always been more interested in the variant of the story that has two people in the saddle.

Riding Out Together

With my digital painting Into the Sunset, I wanted to take that classic Western trope and give it a softer, more romantic focus. Two gay cowboys ride side by side along a dirt path through a pine forest, heading toward snow-capped mountains. We see them from behind — which is important. We're not meeting them; we're watching them go. There's a particular emotional weight to seeing the back of someone you love riding off into a beautiful evening, and that's the feeling I most wanted the painting to hold.

If you look closely at the two figures, you'll see that their shoulders aren't quite parallel — one of them is leaning very gently toward the other. It's a small thing, the kind of thing that happens almost unconsciously between two people who have been riding together for a long time. That small lean is the secret heart of the painting. The journey ahead might be long, the mountains might be distant, but they're not making the trip alone.

The Sky Is Doing Real Work

Instead of a harsh high-noon sun, I chose the "magic hour" — that transition between the warm orange of sunset and the deep, cool blue of full night. If you look from the horizon upward, you can see the whole gradient: glowing orange and pink at the bottom, deepening through purple and indigo, and at the very top a sky already full of stars. They're riding into the part of the evening when day and night are sharing the same sky.

The pine forest closes in on both sides of the path, dense and dark — which would feel a little ominous, except for two small touches. Fireflies dance among the trees, scattered points of warm yellow-green light, and a soft amber glow comes from each man's saddle (small practical lanterns, since they're riding into proper darkness soon). Those little lights make the painting feel less like a couple disappearing into the wilderness, and more like a couple carrying their own small warmth into the night.

A Companion Piece

This painting belongs with another piece of mine, Under the Mountain Sky, which shows what I imagine to be the same two men later that evening — settled against a tree at their campfire, one reading a book while the other leans in and kisses him at the temple. Together the two paintings tell the two halves of a single story: the long ride out, and the quiet moment at camp. They were always intended as companions, though either works on its own.

Add This Story to Your Home

This piece is part of my LGBTQ+ art collection on Redbubble, where I'm building a small body of work celebrating queer love and quiet romance. Into the Sunset is available across the full Redbubble product range — canvas prints, framed art prints, posters, throw pillows, graphic tees, and more. The painting works particularly well as a large canvas — the sky has the kind of gradient that wants room to breathe — or as a wall print in a bedroom or hallway.

Into the Sunset — Framed Print on Redbubble

You can browse my full LGBTQ+ art collection on Redbubble — or visit my shop, KornKob Art, for everything else. You can also search Redbubble for kornkobart (one word).

Finding Warmth in the Wild: A Western Gay Romance Story

2026-01-12T19:44:00.000-08:00

There's a specific kind of silence out in the wilderness, far from city lights — a quiet that draws people together. With my digital painting Under the Mountain Sky, I wanted to capture that feeling of finding your own small private world in the middle of a vast landscape.

A Quiet Moment by Firelight

The painting shows two cowboys settled close against a tree at their camp, with a fire burning warmly to one side. One of the men holds an open book in his lap — and if you look closely, the title on its cover is Under the Mountain Sky, a small wink at the painting's own name. He'd been reading. But just now, his partner has leaned in from behind and pressed a soft, slow kiss to his temple, and his eyes have closed in response. The reading has paused. Whatever the next sentence in the book says, it can wait.

That's what I most wanted to paint. Not a dramatic moment, not a passionate embrace, but the kind of casual, comfortable intimacy that happens between people who have been together long enough that affection has stopped being a big production and has become something more natural — the touch on the shoulder while you do the dishes, the kiss on the temple while your partner reads. That, to me, is what romance actually looks like once the early fireworks are over and the real thing has settled in.

I focused heavily on the lighting to tell this story. The warm, dancing oranges and yellows of the fire pick out the men's faces and the open pages of the book — that safe, shared space of connection. Outside of that glow, the cool purples and deep blues of the twilight mountains stretch out behind them, emphasising that everything either of them needs is already right there in their small circle of light.

Beyond Brokeback

It would be silly to pretend the painting doesn't sit in conversation with Brokeback Mountain — gay cowboys at a mountain campfire is a visual phrase that film made unforgettable. But where that story was, in its bones, a tragedy about love forced into silence, this piece is the opposite. The men in this painting aren't hiding, aren't watching their backs, aren't stealing a moment that the world will punish them for. The kiss in particular is something the older story could never quite afford to paint — small, easy, unhurried, given freely and received without surprise.

That's part of what I wanted to make: a Western romance where the romance is the whole point, no shadow on it. A piece for the wall of someone who'd like to look up from their reading nook and see a couple who chose each other and built a quiet life together, under a big sky.

Celebrating Connection

This is one of a small group of pieces I've made celebrating queer love and the timeless appeal of a Western romance. It's quietly found its audience — three buyers have made it part of their homes so far, which on a platform with tens of millions of artworks for sale is more meaningful than the raw number might suggest. It's clearly speaking to people, and that makes me happy.

Under the Mountain Sky is available at my Redbubble shop as a canvas print, an unframed art print, a poster, a throw pillow, and across the full Redbubble product range. It suits a cosy reading nook, a bedroom wall, or anywhere in a home that could use a piece of quiet, affectionate romance. It also makes a thoughtful gift for a Valentine's Day, an anniversary, a wedding, or any moment that calls for celebrating the partnership of two people who chose each other.

Under the Mountain Sky — Canvas Print on Redbubble

You can browse my full LGBTQ+ art collection on Redbubble — or visit my shop, KornKob Art, for everything else. You can also search Redbubble for kornkobart (one word).

Botanical Elegance: Capturing the Architecture of the Bearded Iris

2026-01-09T14:58:00.000-08:00

Purple Bearded Iris Flower — Digital Oil Painting Framed Art Print

There are flowers that are simple and cheerful, and then there are flowers that feel like complex pieces of architecture. The Bearded Iris falls firmly into the latter category. With their upright "standards" and cascading "falls," they have a structural complexity that is mesmerizing to study. They don't just sit prettily in a garden — they command attention.

Moving Beyond Photography

When I set out to create this piece, a standard photograph felt too literal. It captured the shape, but not the feeling of the flower's velvety texture, or the way light plays in the deep folds of its petals. I turned to digital oil painting techniques to interpret the image — softening the edges, leaning into the interplay of light and shadow.

A Study in Contrast

The composition is built on contrast. The cool, vibrant violet and white tones of the iris pop dramatically against the warm, moody golden-brown background. The brushwork is deliberately textured, giving the piece a rich, old-world feel that bridges the gap between classic botanical illustration and modern digital art.

Bringing Sophistication Home

This isn't just a flower picture — it's a moody, sophisticated portrait. I have made this piece, titled "Purple Bearded Iris Flower Digital Oil Painting," available on my Redbubble shop. It's designed for spaces that need a touch of quiet elegance, and looks stunning as a framed print in a study, a hallway, or above a mantle where its rich colours can serve as a focal point. The image is also available on a range of other Redbubble products if you'd prefer the artwork on a tote, a journal, or a throw pillow.

👉 Purple Bearded Iris Flower — Framed Art Print

View all my work on Redbubble by searching @kornkobart.

Step Into an Alien Landscape: The Huntington Library Desert Garden

2026-01-09T13:13:00.000-08:00

There are gardens that feel gentle and manicured, and then there are gardens that feel like you've stepped onto another planet. The Desert Garden at The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, is decidedly the latter.

About the Desert Garden

The Desert Garden was first planted more than a century ago, and it's now one of the oldest and most extensive collections of mature cacti and succulents in the world. It sits within the wider Huntington estate — 207 acres in total, with about 130 acres of botanical gardens open to the public. The Desert Garden itself spans around ten acres and holds thousands of species of arid-climate plants from around the world, including more than 500 golden barrel cacti (the round yellow-spined plants at the foreground of this photograph) alongside towering columnar cacti, agaves, aloes, dragon trees, and the strange, sculptural boojum tree native to Baja California.

If you're planning a visit, spring is the standout season — the golden barrel cacti produce a striking crown of yellow blossoms in April and May, and many of the other desert species bloom around the same time.

Planning Your Visit

The Huntington is open Wednesday through Monday, closed Tuesdays. A few practical notes worth knowing before you go:

Timed ticket reservations are required Friday through Sunday, on public holidays, and during peak seasons. The peak seasons at the Huntington typically include Spring Break and Easter, Fourth of July week, Thanksgiving week, and the Winter Holidays and New Year period. Exact dates for the current year change annually, so it's worth checking the Huntington's Plan Your Visit page before you set off, particularly if you're travelling any distance.

Upper-level members can enter early between 8 and 10 a.m., and ticket reservations are encouraged even for members to speed up check-in.

Give yourself a full day if you can. The Desert Garden is one of sixteen themed gardens on the estate, and the whole property is genuinely worth a proper visit rather than a rushed one.

Capturing the Drama

The density and variety of life in the Desert Garden is what strikes you first. It's not a few sculptural plants arranged with room to breathe — it's a towering, sprawling landscape of architectural shapes and sharp textures, all growing together.

In taking this photograph I wanted to capture that sense of dramatic scale. My eye was drawn to the massive clusters of golden barrel cacti in the foreground. The sunlight was catching their spines and making them glow almost neon-gold against the darker, towering columnar cacti behind them. The sky that day matched the mood on the ground perfectly — dramatic, sweeping clouds providing a soft counterpoint to the spiky landscape below. The photograph tries to hold the tension between the two: the hard geometry of the plants against the drifting softness of the sky.

Bringing the Desert Home

This image is available on my Redbubble shop as a canvas print, framed art print, poster, and across the full Redbubble product range. It works particularly well as a large statement piece of wall art, bringing the warmth and texture of the California desert into a home or office. It suits a room that already leans toward warm earth tones, a study, a hallway, or any space that could use a piece of landscape that isn't the standard mountain-or-ocean scene.

Huntington Desert Garden — Canvas Print on Redbubble

More Huntington Work

I've been photographing at the Huntington for many years, and several other pieces of mine come from its gardens. My post on a pink mammillaria cactus flower was taken in the same Desert Garden as this photograph — a close-up of one of the tiny bright blooms that appear scattered throughout the beds in spring. From the estate's other gardens, I've also written about a pink peony and pink roses, both from the Rose Garden season.

For a very different Southern California botanical experience, my more recent piece on an ethereal iris photographed at Descanso Gardens covers a completely different garden and one of the most striking flower photographs I've made. And for a completely different desert, my Joshua Tree before-and-after post looks at two of my Mojave photographs and their painterly reworkings.

You can find all my work at my Redbubble shop, KornKob Art — or search Redbubble for kornkobart (one word).