Yazzi (Maryanne Delf)

Rich colors and vibrant textures, along with a wacky, irreverent sense of humor, are what define Yazzi (Maryanne Delf) and her artwork. Since she joined the Archive in 1999, her work has improved a great deal-- not just in her skill level, but in her willingness to experiment artistically, an effort that has paid off very well.







In the Artist's Own Words:
“  Gosh I'm so excited, sitting here in class with a big dopey grin as I JUST got the email from Brian. I turned to Lyndil on the computer next to me and said "I got artist of the month!" She probably thinks the radiation from the computer screen has finally got to me...

Well, I was very far from "artist of the month" material when I first found lionking.org. In fact my cheetahs looked more like deflated balloons and I think I was probably the biggest newbie ever, trying to make friends on the message board and hassling people to look at my *cough* art *cough*. I have some old pictures at the very bottom of my image archive that I've restrained from deleting because they serve as a reminder to myself that with persistence there's eventually improvement.

I'm 20 years old (which feels very old sometimes urgh!), from Melbourne Australia, and I'm in second year of Interactive Multimedia at University. I have way too many pets: Winston the cat, chickens, ducks, a rabbit and a bunch of horses including the very costly (but cute in that clumsy "I don't respect fences" way,) Jackson. My pets influence my drawing in a great way, resulting in mostly animal pictures.

I'm not strictly a Lion King artist although the movie had a huge impact upon my interest in drawing and the community here at lionking.org has always been a great source of encouragement. I began by drawing Simba, Nala and all the rest when the first movie came out and now I draw from my own imagination. I owe a lot to the inspiration of that movie, its music, its emotion....AND ALL YOU PEOPLE! :D

I sincerely thank all of you here, even if you didn't vote for me. I'll continue to try my best to produce pictures for myself and for other people. It really is very special to me to be voted artist of the month and I greatly appreciate it. 		”





From realistic cheetahs to cartoon-like interactions between unlikely species, something that shows up in almost all of Yazzi (Maryanne Delf)'s art is a surprising look into the psychological workings of her characters as representatives of their species. Her "Hyena Treasure" piece doesn't just show a hyena looking hyena-ish; instead, the artists uses props (the skull) and the character's reaction to it to paint a more more expressive picture of the personality involved. In the same way, her "Vulture Insurance" and "Gimme 5" pieces provide a look into the interactions between different species in ways that we seldom see. It's one thing to conceive of a piece of art which focuses on members of a single species, maybe with another species in the background. But to instill both with anthropomorphized versions of their native dispositions and then having them interact according to those personalities-- that's what makes someone not just an artist, but a world-builder.

Yazzi (Maryanne Delf) uses a variety of different media, from unadorned pencils up through computer tools like Painter, though her preference seems to have steered toward the latter recently. It's in keeping with her tendency to experiment artistically; she's seldom afraid to try a new style or a new compositional effect, like the half-cheetah face in the "I see you" piece. Also recently, she has given a great deal of detail to elements like grass and plants, as well as a new attention to fur textures, in pieces like her "Liger" and "Anime Wolf" portraits, that breathe intense life into the characters.

The humor and irreverence with which Yazzi (Maryanne Delf) treats her subjects provides the icing for the confection that is her work. "Wanna Buy a Watch?" is another of her species interaction pieces, but with an additional "gag" of the type that clearly keeps the artist interested in this rich but venerable genre. Her work is full of pranks, jokes, gags, and surprising new takes on situations that we normally consider very mundane and uninteresting, and the stories that come from it are undoubtedly great fun to follow.

It's been a fascinating voyage so far, watching Yazzi (Maryanne Delf) progress-- and it's probably going to get even more so as she continues her growth as an artist!

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