day two-hundred-and-seventy-three - bearded seal

hey it's technically the next day. unless you live somewhere weird, like not south australia...

© jem barratt

meh, i like the angles

but where IS his (/her) beard?

xj

day two-hundred-and-thirteen - tarzans chameleon

for real

© jem barratt

it's truly terrible, and not too different from my other chameleon, but i wanted to draw him because he made the IUCN red list this year.

so you all need to get acquainted with him before he inevitably dies. this is what he looks like in his fancy skin.

what a grumpy post. apologies! i'll make up for it tomorrow. (probably)

xj

day one-hundred-and-ninety - great egret

ah if only egret was spelled with an a (egrat), then its first name would be an anagram of its second name. linguisticising! (at first i spelled that with a semicolon instead of an l, that's how linguistically excited i am)...

© jem barratt

and hey! i successfully drew an animal in the colour it actually is. it's a good day!

(please ignore the yellow above-beakness of egrets and the red on-beakness too...)

xj

day one-hundred-and-eighty-eight - hawk moth

yet another species with a cool scientific family name - sphingidae.

sphin-g'day to you too hawk moth...

© jem barratt

i have a knack for choosing the least cool (or at best, the second-coolest) member of a species to draw. this hawk moth is cool, and a lovely dusty orange colour when not coloured in with lead pencil, but i could have drawn a hummingbird hawk-moth.

that's two bird names in a non-bird species right there. very impressive work hawky.

dash! another missed opportunity.

xj

day one-hundred-and-forty-seven - king vulture

raawr i'm a king vulture (sarcoramphus papa) and i'm gonna eat you!

© jem barratt

but only if you're already dead.*

xj



* so tell your ghost to watch out!

day one-hundred-and-thirty-two - make believe

today has not gone so well, so i took inspiration from a performance i saw tonight. essentially it was an 'instrumental' or picture book, accompanied by orchestral music. the book: the arrival by shaun tan

© jem barratt

not very good drawings i know, but there are loads of made-up animals in the aforementioned book and i wanted to make up some of my own.

initially i wanted to draw an owl bear, but then decided instead to do a tapiraffe, frill-necked lizdog, butterbird, and a catlephanatee.

ahem
xj

p.s. i'm halfway through

p.p.s. i'm ONLY halfway through!!

day one-hundred-and-twenty-four - grass green vine snake

mehhhhhhhhhh...

© jem barratt

apologies for the terrible scan. i weighed up my options and decided the picture was not of great enough quality to warrant re-scanning.

i have better things to do with my time.
(probably not)

xj

day one-hundred-and-ten - seahorse

oh i wish humans lived by seahorse rules because then men would have the babies ha ha ha blah blah...

so many people say that as some kind of witty observation. but would you really like to be a fish that is rubbish at swimming and a creature that has to eat almost constantly to survive?

i doubt it.

© jem barratt

oh i used up all my words before the picture. that was dumb. what else can i tell you about seahorses?

- their size is comparable to a teacup (apparently)
- pygmy seahorses are ADORABLE

that's all. xj

day forty-five - attenborough's long-beaked echidna

that's right. attenborough invented an animal.

© jem barratt

not really, but he sure got his name in one. (huh?)

there are so many interesting things to learn about this guy. go here to learn proper, but in the meantime here are some highlights: myrmecophagous, reddish-brown, terrestrial, montane.

but really. they are known from only one specimen and were thought to be extinct until signs of the echidna were found by EDGE (a conservation initiative aiming to get evolutionarily distinct threatened species on our maps so we can save them already). that's some AMAZING survival!

more quick facts:
- one of only five surviving monotreme species
- spiky tongues
- considered a delicacy
- sad-looking (in my picture at least)

their dire circumstance reminds me of adelaide's own pygmy blue tongue lizard, which were thought to be extinct for 40 years until one was discovered in the stomach of a dead snake. COMEBACK KID!
xj

day forty-four - zoo medley

today i went to the (adelaide) zoo, and boy do they have a lot of parrots now! it's so good. not to mention all the 'zooborns' - mandrills, wallaby, tamarins, bilbies and (as yet unseen) ghost bat.

© jem barratt

i like the happy accident of the music staves showing through from the next page.

so here i drew a razor-billed curassow, a kookaburra, a yellow crowned amazon parrot, a hyacinth macaw, and an archer fish. it would probably be nicer if they were all birds, but i haven't drawn a fish yet and thought it was time.

i need to practise drawing from live animals instead of photos.
xj

day forty-two - fan-fingered gecko

way too many hyphens in that title.

but not as many as the amount of scales this guy has:

© jem barratt

that was fun to draw...

...

that is a fan-fingered gecko and a close-up of his fanned fingers. so strange. it could easily be mistaken for coral or a strange plant, but only if dismembered from the gecko (the head and body might give it away otherwise)

INFORMATIVE!
xj

day thirty-four - sengi

or elephant shrew.

© jem barratt

you should look them up because they are very cute, and most have more trunk-ish noses than mine. more than anything though you should go buy 'life of mammals' and watch the insectivore ep, because sir attenborough messes with one.

in a scientific way.

xj

day thirty-two - rabbit

i know we're meant to hate rabbits in australia, but they are still cute... so....

© jem barratt

nothing much more to add really. hopefully i can buy a new scanner tomorrow and draw way more with pencil.

rabbits ARE pests. they're just cute ones. so make sure you admire them as you wish myxomatosis upon their warrens.
xj

day twenty-three - bee-eater

if there's one thing i like, it's birds (you may have noticed). i also like words. but if there's three things i don't like, it's counting.

here's a hilarious anecdote: i used to be extremely disinterested in birds (except finches). and now i like them a lot. what a riot.

but it is true. one such object of my liking is the bee-eater:

© jem barratt

this guy is eurasian, but i was most excited by the carmine bee-eaters in the latest ep of "the great rift: africa's wild heart". they were so 80s. i simply frothed with excitement.

in a good way.

they're so bright, and weird and like little birdy banditos. they BATHE in DUST. they have BEARDS. my only regret is that i didn't draw all 26 species at once.
xj

day ten - blue-grey gnatcatcher

double digits!! let's celebrate with angry birds...

© jem barratt

oh you thought i meant the game? i can't at all see how you would have reached that conclusion. in any case this is a real life angry bird, and incidentally exactly how i think i would look as an animal.

he is a blue-grey gnatcatcher, which is a great sounding name but not so much a great sounding game. although why they didn't portmanteau that into gnatcher i'll never know.

makin' up for the real facts i included yesterday by drawing an animal i know nothing about! woo! here's a photo so you can revel in his furious glory.

xj

day five - zebra finch

today i drew one of my favourite animals. finches are without a doubt the cutest and most furious of all birds, with gouldians being the most flashy, and zebras (see below) as the most enchanting.

© jem barratt

animals with rosy cheeks are only second to watermelon babies. perhaps one day i'll draw that battle... cockatiels and zebra finches vs tapirs and emus.

unfortunately my scanner is not designed for drawings and so this guy's cheeks are a little lacklustre.

hopefully this most excellent of art installations will make up for it (you really can't get much better than trapping zebra finches in guitars...)

xj