Maine-based Robert Dowling Jr. creates wonderfully whimsical stories with a slightly surreal touch. The self-taught artist, who works primarily in acrylics and oils, often paints characters with their faces covered or turned away. Love art like this that both children and adults can enjoy in their own unique way.

I would like to tell you why many artists, who like me, have painted portraits and landscapes in oils on canvas, worked with acrylics, watercolors, and pen and ink drawings, have turned to the art of gourd carving.

In this Monday, June 15, 2015 photo, Ahmad Abu Jereda, 16, carries Max, the male lion cub, as he passes by Palestinians at the main garden in Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip. A pair of lion cubs are stuck at a Gaza-Israel border crossing en route to a Jordan animal sanctuary, after being kept for a year by a family in crowded Gaza. Saduldin al-Jamal had bought the cubs from the Gaza zoo, hit during last summer's Israel-Hamas war. His family would take them to parks or the beach and children – those brave enough – would come up to pet them. (Photo by Adel Hana/AP Photo)

Women pose for a photograph in traditional Ethiopian dress during the annual Timkat Epiphany celebration on January 19, 2017 in Gondar, Ethiopia. Timkat is the Ethiopian Orthodox Christian festival which celebrates the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan river. During the festival, Tabots, or models of the Ark of the Covenant, are taken from churches around Gondar and paraded through the streets to Fasilides Bath. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

A boy crawls under a cow during a religious ceremony celebrating the Tihar festival, also called Diwali, in Kathmandu, October 23, 2014. Hindus all over Nepal are celebrating the festival during which they worship cows, which are considered a maternal figure, and other animals. Also known as the festival of lights, devotees worship the goddess of wealth Laxmi by illuminating and decorating their homes using garlands, oil lamps, candles and colourful light bulbs. (Photo by Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

The Chilean ship “Skorpios II” is seen after it ran aground in “Maillen” island, near Puerto Montt, south of Santiago, in this handout picture from the Chilean Navy, February 5, 2015. According to the Chilean Navy, the ship's 89 passengers and 31 crew members were all evacuated and no oil spills or casualties were reported. (Photo by Reuters/Chilean Navy)

Tao Xiangli gets out of his homemade submarine after operating it in a lake on the outskirts of Beijing September 3, 2009. Amateur inventor Tao, 34, made a fully functional submarine, which has a periscope, depth control tanks, electric motors, manometer, and two propellers, from old oil barrels and tools which he bought at a second-hand market. He took 2 years to invent and test the submarine which costs 30,000 yuan ($4,385). (Photo by Christina Hu/Reuters)

Nepalese Hindu devotees offer oil lamps in the Bagmati River as they observe the festival of Bala Chaturdashi in the early morning hours at the Pashupati Temple in Kathmandu, Nepal, 28 November 2016. Seven kinds of seeds – paddy, barley, sesame, wheat, gram, maize and finger millet – are sown around the temple premises in the name of loved ones departed during the last three years, in the belief that the departed souls will receive salvation. (Photo by Narendra Shrestha)