March 25, 2012

day three-hundred-and-twenty-seven - jackal

i'll be honest. i was preeeetty hungover yesterday. and also i had to review a gig. so i decided myself too ill and time-poor to bother with animal drawing.

but today i have drawn seven. so get over it.

© jem barratt

this guy is chasin' some flamingos in real life, which i can totally relate to. but also it made me start to want to draw flamingos again and i had to quickly stop myself. (maybe next year i'll do 365 flamingos)

its ok.

meh?

xj

March 23, 2012

day three-hundred-and-twenty-six - threadfin butterflyfish

a cute fish

© jem barratt

and minimal words. it's been a looooooong, fairly horrible week.

let's hope this fishy had a good one.

xj

March 22, 2012

day three-hundred-and-twenty-five - red kite

forty days to go

side note: the spelling of forty really annoys me. i'm sure if i was american i'd be cool with it. but i'm not! also i think there should be an 'australian english' - canada has claimed their own english, which is so not its own language (i'm allowed to say that, i lived there for half a year)

wow sidetracked! now back to the important stuff. first, the drawing:

© jem barratt

mmm, nice and difficult to see. its how all art should be!

second, i have managed to drew yet another animal with a copy-cat scientific name, i.e. milvus milvus
(boo to linnaeus, someone who i usually appreciate for being a hilarious character and nature pervert, for originally naming these guys falco milvus and thus failing to impress me)

third, ... WAIT another side note: i was just going to write a mumble (if possible) tonight, and look at the monster it had turned into... uh oh... that side note is leading to ANOTHER SIDE NOTE: i do mumble like a banshee in real life (side note within a side note [an inside note perhaps?] banshees vocalise pretty clearly, what with their propensity for screaming, i.e. anti-mumbling) and have consequently ordered numerous soy lattes instead of skinny lattes

FASCINATING!

but not as fascinating as the feathers of a red kite. truly feathers-inating.

xj

March 21, 2012

day three-hundred-and-twenty-four - honduran milk snake

but not your standard honduran milk snake...

© jem barratt

a two-headed albino specimen.

if that's not the most impressive thing i've ever drawn then i don't know what is. true, it's not very representative of the actual species... but to that i say... pphhh.

normally they are black and orange - i.e. BORING (actually they look just as cool in their normal colours), and only have one head - SO BORING

so nature decided to spice things up. and i appreciate it, although the snake presumably has a shorter life span and does not appreciate it as much as i

and hey, if i did draw a snake of normal colouring then i might have to tell you about an experiment i read about that tried to ascertain if milk snakes were coloured so in order to mimic the coat of deadly coral snakes and thus minimise predation

phew! lucky we avoided that!

xj

March 20, 2012

day three-hundred-and-twenty-three - sulawesi wrinkled hornbill

eww wrinkles

© jem barratt

right?

i don't know. personally i'm more drawn (pun definitely intended) to his colours than his wrinkles. more and betterer colours than i even depicted here.

ok, so the colours are the same. at least that photo highlights how weird hornbills are really.

and these ones are fancy too, feeding on fruit and figs (hang on ... why are figs listed separate from 'fruit' - some kind of conspriacy no doubt).

this is also a fine example of my apparent knack to miss an animal's coolest/most hilarious/most memorable common name. yes he is a sulawesi wrinkled hornbill.

but he is also a knobbed hornbill. DRAT!

xj