A piece of Skyrim fan-art by Blotch sold for $5500 at Further Confusion 2012's art show last weekend. [sibe/reddit]

The mixed-media work depicts a battle between a leopard-like Khajiit and a non-morphic dragon. [dA, FA]

Videl, the winning bidder, was enthusiastic about his purchase:

It was totally worth it! Love the work of Blotch and love Skyrim!!

The most expensive furry art show piece sold to date is Goldenwolf's "Eyes of the Night", which was auctioned for $10,000 at Further Confusion 2004.

Update (29 Jan): Videl says he was bidding on behalf of his roommates as well as himself.

A set of four auctions featuring work by 60 artists has been launched to support Belgian fursuiter Cookie, who organizers say has been diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer.

Each auction contains the work of at least 20 artists, and has a minimum bid of $250.

Well, at least the Circus Circus Hotel and Casino… We want to thank the folks at Cartoon Brew for turning us on to this new press release: “For generations of animation fans there is no greater legend than Chuck Jones. The creator of the famed Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for Warner Bros., Tom & Jerry cartoons, the TV version of Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas and many other well-known classics, Jones was a pioneer in the art of animation and a fine artist in his own right. His life and legacy will be celebrated on January 19 with the official grand opening of The Chuck Jones Experience at Circus Circus Las Vegas… The Chuck Jones Experience is a nearly 10,000-square-foot destination that provides kids and animation fans of all ages with an extraordinary place to not only learn about the art of animation, but to discover the creativity and magic that’s inside us all. Designed to ‘Educate, Inspire & Entertain’, The Chuck Jones Experience takes visitors on a unique journey through Jones’ life, engaging guests with interactive exhibits, displays and learning experiences along the way.

Nominations are open for the 2011 Ursa Major Awards, intended to recognize the best works published in the field of anthropomorphics last year. Nominations close on February 29; voting starts March 15 and closes May 4 (to allow last-minute voting from Morphicon).

Furry fans may nominate up to five works in each category. The 2011 Awards will be announced and presented in a ceremony at CaliFur VIII in Irvine, CA, June 1–3, 2012.

Available awards include Best Motion Picture, Dramatic Short Work or Series, Novel, Short Fiction, Other Literary Work, Graphic Story, Comic Strip, Magazine, Website, Published Illustration, and Game.

If you cannot think of five worthwhile nominees in each category, see the 2011 Recommended Anthropomorphics List on the Ursa Major Awards website for suggestions.

Two galleries in downtown San Jose will be hosting open-to-the-public furry art shows concurrent with Further Confusion 2012, from January 12 (Thursday) to 21 (Saturday).

The stated objective of these shows is to get high-quality furry art out in the public, and to introduce San Jose's downtown gallery scene to the wealth of furry artwork. Local news media representatives will be invited to visit.

There is an open call for artwork, including con-badges, which will be printed by the show; the submission deadline is December 31. The shows are being organized independently of Further Confusion by its Art Track events lead, B. Root, creator of webcomic The Dawn Chapel.

The KALEID gallery and comic book publishers Slave Labor Graphics are hosting the shows.

The 2011 Recommended Anthropomorphics List will close on Sunday, January 15, giving fans just three weeks to recommend any titles released at the end of the year. Nominations for the 2011 Ursa Major Awards open on January 12 (the first day of Further Confusion 2012).

All-ages furry art community ArtSpots is to close January 2, as efforts to create a new site could not be reconciled with the existing one. The move was announced by the official staff persona of Seurat:

These last few weeks planning the future of ArtSpots has been full of great ideas. However, we have wrestled with many roadblocks as well. This site has been around for over five years now, and with that has come a lot of expectations. We have come to the conclusion, sad as it may be, that given ArtSpots original goals and its history, it would be impossible to move forward with these new ideas.

The Yerf historical archive, currently hosted at ArtSpots, is to move to a new site built by WikiFur custodian GreenReaper and hosted by Timduru.

The closure will leave a vacuum in the market for all-ages furry art hosting. Many artists are expected to move to deviantART, where a group has been created for trading-post art.

The Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association, which administers the annual Ursa Major Awards, has updated the 2011 Anthropomorphic Reading List to include the titles recommended by furry fans through the beginning of December. This list is often used by fans to nominate in the next year's Awards.

All fans are invited to recommend worthwhile anthropomorphic works in eleven categories (motion pictures, dramatic short films or broadcasts, novels, short fiction, other literary works, graphic stories, comic strips, magazines, published illustrations, websites, and games) first published during 2011, if they are not already on the list.

Send in your recommendations and read the List to see what other fans have recommended this year. Have you read all sixteen comic strips, for example? What have you been missing?

This month is the “last chance” to recommend anything anthropomorphic first appearing in 2011.¹ The List has been revised this year to include Furry websites. If you have any favorite websites that were not previously eligible, please recommend them now.

The Anthropomorphic Literature and Arts Association, which administers the annual Ursa Major Awards, has updated the 2011 Anthropomorphic Reading List to include all of the titles recommended by Furry fans through the end of October. This list is often used by fans to nominate in the next year's Awards.

There are only two months left to recommend what you think is good this year. The 2011 Anthropomorphic Reading List will close on January 15, 2012, to give fans a couple of weeks to read/see works that came out at the end of December.

The 2012 Ursa Major Awards, for the best in anthropomorphic literature and art of 2011, will be presented in a ceremony at Califur 8, at the Irvine Marriott Hotel in Irvine, California on 1–3 June 2012.

The 2011 Awards were presented at Morphicon 2011 in Columbus, Ohio on 13 May 2011. The Awards have been presented at Califur once before, in 2007.

For historical purposes, a collection of links and other tidbits posted to Newsbytes in August.

Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman presented "Stor Gul Kanin" as part of a festival of art in Örebro, Sweden. The gigantic, yellow bunny now dominates the open space adjacent to St. Nicolai's church. The Huffington Post has a slideshow of pictures and a brief article.

Nordguard, Book One: Across Thin Ice
by Tess Garman & Teagan Gavet
St. Paul, MN, Sofawolf Press, June 2011
Hardcover $39.95 (75 pages), paperback $19.95

Tess Garman (Kenket) & Teagan Gavet (BlackTeagan) – better known under their joint pseudonym of Blotch – have a well-deserved reputation for anthropomorphic light humor, with numerous cover paintings and their webcomic-turned-graphic novel Dog’s Days of Summer.

Now the duo show that they are equally adept at drama, with the beginning of a cold, cruel tale of murder and treachery in an anthropomorphic Far North.

Furry fans should definitely not miss “Nordguard: Across Thin Ice”.

The new big thing in Furry Fandom is contests! Yes, now you can enter into a contest to win a paid commission. All you have to do is submit a piece of art, of the finest quality you can make, to specification and for free to the person running the contest… see the flaw yet?

To those of you who've not worked it out: yes, this is what we call a "scam".

Updated with some probability theory showing the scammy nature of these contests.