day three-hundred-and-forty-eight - australian sea lion

i envisioned something much better than this:

© jem barratt

oh well. i didn't envision sleeping on a couch last night, but that also happened.

oh life. oh liiiiiiiife. doo do do do.

you know what. i think i'd rather see a ghost than eat a piece of toast. if you don't know what i'm talking about then you are...

- a) not tired enough
- b) not familiar enough with 90s music

maybe i can end with more appropriate lyrics.

sea lion! sea lion! sea lion! sea lion!

xj

day two-hundred-and-seventy-six - philippine eagle

i'm beginning to think the scanner i love may not be so great...

© jem barratt

i can't blame the scanner entirely - i can also blame my photoshop-laziness and tiny sketchbook. it doesn't matter. what does matter is that i like this picture a lot.

yay! finally!

wikipedia suggests these guys are also known as 'monkey-eating eagles' but i'm not sure i trust that. they do in fact eat monkeys (and flying lemurs!), but the name just seems too much. actually the very idea that a bird can eat a monkey is too much.

but that's not even the best thing about these birds. they are critically endangered... and how cool is that!? no, seriously though, because of their conservation status you can be jailed for up to twelve years if you kill and/or eat one. awesome. go the philippines!

and don't be amazed by their penchant for eating flying lemurs - it may seem like they fly to madagascar just for a feed, but no, the 'lemurs' they eat are not lemurs at all. only nominally. and actually they can't fly either... but that is a story i have ruined for another day

in the meantime admire this badass eagle, and wish for some more devious 'lemurs' to 'fly' its way and keep the species alive.

xj

day two-hundred-and-seventy-five - francois' langur

oh how great is this day that is definitely not monday jan 30? super great i bet. i mean... i know

ok it's pretty tiresome writing these posts as though it's the future, and i've only written two. in any case, 'today' i drew a francois' langur.

© jem barratt

not bad jemma. not bad at all.

like many other primates, these guys are endangered, and also they have fluoro orange babies. i wonder if that's so they can keep an eye on them while they're too young to look after themselves? i don't think scientists know for sure, but that i certainly one of the theories. maybe i can find out when i, myself, am a scientist? i don't think that's getting ahead of myself...

xj

day two-hundred-and-seventy-four - orangutan

hello, what a fine tuesday this is. yes, the weather is... grand, and the day's happenings are quite surprising indeed!

enough jibber-jabber, it's orangu-time:

© jem barratt

it's not the worst thing i've ever painted. let's put it that way. i really don't have time (or money) for a watercolouring course, so maybe i'll just have to teach myself.

oh no! that reminds me i was going to refresh my spanish... i guess that tells you how likely teaching myself watercolouring is.

if you look at this guy, you may be forgiven for thinking orangs are not faring too poorly.but it's a trap! the more mcdonald's you eat the more their habitation is destroyed. that is OBVIOUSLY a direct correlation - and i should know, i've almost enrolled in science already...

xj

day two-hundred-and-sixty-eight - peccary

all the kinds of peccary! condensed into one...

© jem barratt

i'm a bit obsessed with charley harper. i got his biography for christmas, but today i returned from my lunch break to find a postcard book of charley harper prints on my desk courtesy of a particularly lovely friend. so that re-sparked my desire to steal be inspired by his style.

i love peccaries. although they should be called 'head-pigs-on-legs'. truly. and apparently they can kill humans. really?

that same aforementioned friend was alone in a bolivian jungle when she heard their frantic shrieking coming towards her. meanwhile i was piranha fishing with another friend... as you do.

although they don't look like killers, the sound they make suggests otherwise. their alternative names 'javelina' and 'skunk pig' should give you an idea of their javelin-like tusks and their awful smell.

but i still love them. they just look. so. funny.

xj

day two-hundred-and-sixty-one - amur leopard

david attenborough once told me (via a tv show not in real life unfortunately) that there were only 35 amur leopards left in the wild. THIRTY-FIVE!

and that was at least five years ago, so hopefully this species is not extinct. i'm glad the one i drew looks quite sad because it's more evocative that way.

© jem barratt

also his body is vanishing which is just so deep.

i got accepted into a science degree today, so hopefully i can eventually help save some species. the amur leopard will no doubt be extinct by then (aside: can you believe black rhinos are actually extinct in the wild!? humans are the worst), but maybe we'll discover some new species that i can then proceed to save

either that or i'll do absolutely nothing with it just like my other two degrees...

xj

day two-hundred-and-fifty-eight - lion-tailed-macaque

sorry guy-who-named-lion-tailed-macaques... lion-tailed you say? lion-TAILED!?

© jem barratt

they have lion-manes guy, come on! and look how unhappy the macaque is about it.

this oversight has of course prompted me to devise yet another drawing series that i will never do. but i'd better not share it, because the fact that i have said i won't do it means i probably will.

i also have a new blog idea in mind. although it would require a fair bit of work, and as we all know... i... am... laaaaa....z.................y

anyway back to the macaque - he looks cool. as do many other types of macaques. this one in particular can be quite terrifying, super sneaky and... huh?

xj

day one-hundred-and-ninety-six - przewalski's horse

pronounced sheh-VAL-ski apparently (not pruz-e-wul-skee as i had hoped)

© jem barratt

terrible drawing i know. i do have a knack for never drawing whole animals. i always start the animal in a really inopportune spot on the page. almost as inopportune as using 'inopportune' in that sentence was.
huh?

confusing. anyway, my horse-drawing ability is irrelevant - the important thing is that this guy (and his horsey brethren) is pretty endangered. the good news though, is that they were deemed to be extinct in the wild in 1996 but have since done it like crazy to reach a population number of more than 300.

you can see other IUCN 'red listed' species here.

xj