birdspot

It’s painting. It’s not painting. It looks a little photographic? It’s not photographic. It is all hand drawn, but it’s not quite a drawing. Ultimately I think I am working on projections, but a static print is looking sorta cool too. This is (remotely) from Trustom Pond Wildlife Refuge, RI, where the native grasses are lovely and every last one of them is humanly-sown. I’m not saying this is a finished piece. And almost nothing about this landscape is real, btw; it is not a scene as you would see it were you standing there today.

stuffed chipmunk, ny, ny

This is the newest addition to my collection of all that is sick and wrong. OK, well, it has set the bar a little higher than the assortment of bones and skulls I already have, and therefore might actually be the FIRST addition to a collection of that which is sick and wrong. It is stultifying how much I love this.

These are a couple of sketches of what I did NOT see while I was NOT in Antarctica. Fortunately, my parents have given me carte blanche with their photos, and I am doing a little vicarious travel. I really have to point out that I am surprised by how much I am liking penguins, and that it has nothing to do with a certain trend of the last couple of years. But, dude, they WALK, and in so doing have incredible muscle structure and make interesting and ridiculous poses. It feels like figure drawing 101 all over again. The top sketch is of a young Gentoo Penguin (with some down still on it), and the bottom is a King Penguin. I am working on more, and perhaps a finished drawing or two, and will post them as I go.

great blue heron, san joaquin wildlife sanctuary, irvine, ca

Look, you can see right through the side of its cornea. It was pretty spectacular to see this through the bins, much brighter than here. I was hoping to get one photo where the bird was looking away, and this is it. I had spent a day birding with Amy of WildBird magazine in Orange County, cruising the Back Bay in a remarkable 1972 BMW and feeling about as cool as one can be when you are pulling over constantly to look for birds hiding in the mud. Highlights were a Clapper Rail and a Eurasian Green-winged Teal (got a photo, but this one’s a lumper splitter lumper so it doesn’t does count? still cool). The egrets and herons were being odd, with many of them land-hiking and peering dimly into reeds and bushes, necks swaying uneasily but a little too purposefully to be described as drunken. We surmised, to the best of our abilities, that they were after insects, or perhaps were intoxicated by the 80+ degree weather and were thinking about nests, etc. Day list: (more…)