Sy!! How the hell have you been?

I remain alive, and kicking... :)

We really have to meet up again at some convention, or even on SL!

Grey muzzles ..... Umm. What was we talking about?? Zzzzz

Hey! Hi!

Howl have you been doing..

Coolness!

They're so utterly cute, I love skiltaires so much!

They all love you back! :)

Beautiful.

Thank you! my number 1 fan! :)

Plug me in and I make the summer bearable! Phooooooooo~ :o *gasp* phhhoooooooo~~~

Wow, I don't remember seeing these!

My best friend from HS and the University and his wife bought the piece from me at the art show one year. They live about 250 miles North of me, so I only get to see the painting when I visit. I recently found negatives of pictures I took of the painting, scanned them, and posted them! I will probably post more pictures from the photos I'm archiving in the future.

Is this new, or old and dug up recently?

1986, so. pretty old. About 1 year after furry fandom as we know it got going.

You need to get back in the game. Draw something!

I've been in the fandom for a long time but this is the first time I've ever come across Skiltaire so with the risk of sounding stupid I will ask what are these magnificent creatures?

The skiltare are something I came up with in the 70's. I was watching Star Trek, and pissed that EVERY alien they encountered was humanoid (with very few exceptions) of course, they had a budget to consider, too. Being a weasel fan, I thought about what a sentient weasel species might be like. Having read science fiction (James Schmidt "The Demon Breed") which had intelligent giant otters, I came up with a species that were sentient, but communicated via tel-empathy ("analog telepathy", that is reading and sending feelings and memories of experiences and sharing sensory information instead of using letters and words like humans talk) I came up with the name as an analog for "fisher" (a kind of weasel), using the word "skilt" (a primitive fish mentioned in Schmidt's novels) and "aire" (to hunt, which i made up myself)= fish-hunter. They have an advanced society (tribal) that didn't have obvious structures/towns/cities as they lived with nature (which they understood) instead of trying to displace it. This meat that the humans (and other sentient species) did not recognize them as "advanced". They also appeared on several worlds with similar ecology, very distant from each other. I started a story about a human that finds a kit that survived when her tribe was attacked by poachers, and he raises her and eventually they become partners. He helps the human federation recognize the skiltaire as another advanced species, and eventually finds out their BIG SECRET (which the painting depicts).

What a classic ^^.