Rascal's Perch

Lions and Christians

2011-11-12T08:08:00.001-08:00

Between 1968 and 1978 Thomas produced an extensive body of original artwork with a wild animal theme, to include several oil paintings. He was a major vendor during those days to zoos, wild animal parks and aquariums. Larger accounts using his services include the Los Angeles Zoo, San Diego Zoo, Sea World, Wildlife Safari in Oregon, Marineland of the Pacific, Topeka Zoo, National Zoo in Washington DC, Busch Gardens in Florida and several more.

Commission painting of African Lion pride.

African wildlife was popular and often requested in his paintings, several of which were displayed regularly at Bischoff's Taxidermy in Hollywood.

Several family members are Christian in their beliefs and Thomas is very aware of the Biblical reference to the Lion and Lamb as symbols of world peace someday. Prompted by this he created a couple paintings with this theme. They are featured on nazSTUFF.com and are in the Visionary category in his Zazzle Store on several gift items.


First effort painted in 1969. Lion and Lamb.

Reproduced as a fine art giclee print.


2nd composition, painted 2008

Typical items offering this imprint.

Business Card Templates

2011-10-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

One of the more popular products produced by nazSTUFF.com is business card templates. These are professionally produced graphic backgrounds over which you place your own personal and business information. Software provided by Zazzle makes it easy, just point and click and type.

Sampler of Business Card Backgrounds available.

Most attractive about this collection is the fact that most of the designs have a southwest theme. If your business or service involves that national forest, touring, surveying, archaeology, landscaping, trees, native plants, Native Americans, etc., you'll find the right background design here. Just as important, many of these business cards have matching products; you can coordinate apparel (t-shirts), mugs, mousepads, note cards, iPad covers and much more for a coherent theme. Make a lasting impression.

Don't miss this opportunity, its all been done for you!

Violence in Paint

2011-10-22T14:54:00.000-07:00

Painted scene north of Flagstaff, Arizona - Storm

In the last year weather has played a new role in our lives in northern Arizona. We are experiencing stronger storm events with deeper snow, higher winds and more powerful thunderstorms than what is considered historically normal... that have also begun producing tornadoes. This is unusual for Arizona. Six tornadoes in October 2010 made the news. There have been a few others since.

This "impasto-style" painting was inspired by such events. To an artist this kind of power in nature stirs the passion within the painter. This is just one in a new series of such paintings now being created and published as stock, royalty free, clip art originals for publishers and advertisers, anywhere in the world.

This new style really adds to and enhances the Forest Textures Stock Photography already published on nazSTUFF.com. Select images are also reproduced on select products in our Zazzle Store. Enjoy.

Plein Aire Clip Art

2011-10-15T13:10:00.000-07:00

Artistic rendition of sculpture on local historic church.

Simultaneous with this BLOG launch nazSTUFF.com is releasing a new series of stock clip art images with a creative flair. These images are going to be aimed at publishers of every ilk... web, print, etc., and have an artistic, attention getting, style. Each will be an image interpreted using Plein Aire Oil Painting. Yes, big bold spontaneous brush strokes on every subject, still focused around northern Arizona.

This project will allow us to get away from natural history a bit and feature things more social, more commercial and on the streets of daily life. Designers are always looking for attention-getting illustrations that do what a photo can't.

We hope you will look in on this collection as it grows and consider using the images. The fees for this original new work will be that same as those established.

These two examples are derived from popular community churches where religious beliefs are practiced. They also represent historic heritage.

You can see that this is going to be a dynamic collection of clip art images with great possibilities. Enjoy.

We will be tweeting new images!

Rainbow Trout w/ Bluegills Painting

2011-10-11T12:58:00.000-07:00

Focusing this paragraph on just one of the digital fish paintings completed by Thomas, here is a rendition of a Lees Ferry Rainbow Trout with Bluegills. This is a giclee reproduction on wrapped canvas, ready to hang and display on your trophy fish wall. Other versions are on mugs, t-shirts, mousepads and more.

Complete online step by step tutorials have been prepared. See how Thomas prepared special Photoshop brushes for painting fish scales. Enjoy the entire collection.

Bull Elk Oil Painting

2011-10-11T09:54:00.000-07:00

In Spring of 2003 Thomas was still doing in-public oil painting demonstrations in the lobby of the Old Town Art Gallery in downtown Flagstaff, Arizona. He was working on a painting that became one of northern Arizona's most popular, selling more reproductions than most.

The "Wrapped" canvas Giclee is the trophy to own.

This painting, "Fall on McMillan Mesa," depicts a bull elk crashing through mullein stalks and rabbitbrush on the open meadow just above Flagstaff, right after an early snow. Today, this is a historical painting as this space is now filled with homes and private property fences. When Thomas first moved here this mesa was wide open and he and his dog spent daily walks here. Hence the attraction to do the painting.

You can see that in addition to note cards, posters and t-shirts, this painting is available reproduced by the giclee process on stretched canvas.

Thomas at his easel in the Old Town Gallery

As it turns out this is one of the paintings presented on nazSTUFF.com as a step by step oil painting demonstration. You view how it was painted. Any of these keepsakes can be yours.

Attached Greenhouse

2011-10-10T08:19:00.000-07:00

For over ten years Thomas operated a successful passive solar attached greenhouse. The concept, design, engineering and construction was his own. The project was so successful that each year the Master Gardener class would visit the unit as part of a field trip.

To scale rendering used for visualization.

One Christmas his gift to all of his neighbors was a vine ripened tomato from his greenhouse.

A complete journal report, including free plans, is published on nazSTUFF.com for those interested in solving their own high altitude gardening challenges.

Thomas has consulted with off grid homesteaders as well as back yard farmers.

Thomas also volunteered in the organic vegetable garden project at the local Arboretum where dozens of fresh vegetables were harvested in our short growing season. The season was always culminated by a pot luck meal created using vegetables from this garden's harvest.

Digital Fish Paintings

2011-10-09T10:30:00.000-07:00

Detail of Striped Bass, digitally painted.

Part of Thomas' life experience was to live through the computer revolution. Out of necessity as well as exploration, he made the transition from traditional paintbrush to digital tools, some as mundane as a "mouse." Late in the 90s Thomas took on a personal project to explore and demonstrate the application of developing skills in a vector program culminating in raster. In other words, he started a project in Illustrator and finished it in Photoshop. His subject for this exercise was popular trophy fish. From Bluegills to monster Striped Bass and everything in between Thomas completed a classic set of digital illustrations that provide original images for hundreds of imprintables and illustrative opportunities.

Additionally, Thomas was deliberate enough that he recorded the entire process into a series of digital painting tutorials. Even now, fifteen years later, these pages on the nazSTUFF.com web site are amongst the most popular pages perused. Thomas devised transparent Photoshop brushes for painting fish scales, a technique unrivaled today.

Oil Painting Demonstrations

2011-10-07T08:19:00.000-07:00

Details from Fall on McMillan Mesa oil painting.

Fortunately for the rest of us, when Thomas executed his oil paintings he recorded them step by step as demonstrations, particularly during the years when he painted publicly in the lobby of the Old Town Art Gallery in Flagstaff, Arizona. We are in the process of posting these step by step oil painting demonstrations on the nazSTUFF web site for your perusal. The subject matter of these paintings also celebrate the ancient and natural history of northern Arizona. And, as it is the purpose of this site, reproductions and product imprints are available for those who want a piece of the original.

Intuitive Hiker

2011-10-06T15:46:00.000-07:00

Thomas, amongst some of his discoveries.

The inspiration for this web site comes from the observations, artwork and interpretations of JH Thomas and his archaeological hikes over the past 30 years in northern Arizona.

Paging through nazSTUFF.com you will find reports on prehistoric people, their occupation and their artifacts that demonstrate their impact, survivability and their talented creativity while living in this region for thousands of years before us. Thomas' reverence for all of this spills from the articles and illustrations and oil paintings he has done so far.

Thomas spent over 15 years as a wildlife artist and publisher prior to his transfer to Arizona. In the 1970s nearly every national zoo, aquarium and wildlife theme park knew of and used his work. All that changed when he came to Flagstaff and discovered an even deeper passion, the prehistoric and natural history of northern Arizona.

Make It Personal

2011-10-06T14:04:00.000-07:00

Nearly every item that we feature in our online "Print-On-Demand" Store can be personalized, made into a custom version just for you. Online we provide you with tools to add your own imprint to our templates. Our images often just serve as backgrounds for your handiwork. Take advantage of our thousands of designs, available royalty free, and create as many coordinated items as you like. Think business desktop for example. You need mugs, business cards, mousepads, and more. This is the place. No set up fees, no minimum order. Satisfaction guaranteed.

Ancient Arizona

2011-10-04T13:56:00.000-07:00

nazSTUFF devotes an extraordinary amount of space to articles and artwork about Southwest Archaeology. Mr. Thomas, the owner and founder of our web site, nazstuff.com, is an amateur archaeologist, interpreter and artist. He has worked with local professionals for over 30 years, recording ancient sites and doing reconstruction paintings. He is famous for personally finding unrecorded ruins and for creating oil paintings of big pueblo sites and how they looked 900 years ago. See his paintings on Tuzigoot and Wupatki. You will find many imprinted business items and souvenirs, including interpretive posters, maps and guides, exclusive to this web site. Rock Art petroglyphs are a favorite subject for graphic interpretation. You simply cannot talk about northern Arizona without including prehistory, the ancient people who lived here and archaeology's effort to understand them.

Native American Artists

2011-10-04T06:33:00.000-07:00

nazSTUFF proudly publishes the work of local Navajo and Hopi artists to include Michael Sockyma and Raymond Judge.

nazSTUFF Tweets

2011-10-03T19:29:00.000-07:00

Oh yes, simultaneous to this BLOG read our TWEETS.

Grand Canyon Interpretation

2011-10-03T14:23:00.000-07:00

A major topic on nazSTUFF is the Grand Canyon National Park. We consider it as a geological living laboratory, a biological habitat, an international tourist attraction (5 million visitors per year), and a National Park. We feature many original oil paintings and graphic designs in our imprintable selection. We also have invested thousands of hours into the development of exclusive charts, maps, guides and posters, all with an educational intent. Our web pages include directories for guides and river runners to help you get connected. We cannot have a web site on Arizona without devoting considerable space to the Grand Canyon. We hope you like the items we offer; you will not find them in any gift shop.

nazSTUFF Towns

2011-10-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

Obviously, the first place for us to begin our web page categories on nazSTUFF is where people live or visit. So, you'll find links to Flagstaff, Sedona, Winslow, Jerome and the Grand Canyon, to get us started. More to come. We're creating themed graphics for each of these featured destinations and you'll find lots of gift ideas to choose from. Celebrate your visit, make them personal. There are also editorial pages with magazine-like articles to peruse, on several related subjects. You'll notice some advertising for northern Arizona tour companies and links to our Forest Textures Clip Art. We are constantly increasing the visual experience with imprinted apparel, note cards, mugs, US Postage, business card templates, mousepads, tote bags and more. Many natural history guides and posters are exclusive to nazSTUFF. We publish Roadside Wildflower Guides, Grand Canyon Geology Charts and Maps, even Greenhouse Building Plans.

We are building a directory of locally owned businesses to support hometown economy. We have a list of local practitioners of alternative medicine. We feature the work of both Hopi and Navajo artists. New events and related images will be added constantly.

About nazSTUFF

2011-10-03T06:44:00.000-07:00

At nazSTUFF you'll find different themes about life in northern Arizona, loaded with artistic and photographic solutions and promotions.

All Things nazSTUFF

2011-10-02T16:22:00.000-07:00

Explaining www.nazstuff.com... Products and essays.