Swan on text

Here's my drawing from Friday- Sorry for the late posting!!

Illustration Friday: Instinct

The maternal instinct is a strong one! I tried making these two images relate to one another more, and I'm not sure I succeeded, but I wanted to submit something for this week's IF theme!  Enjoy! : D

Friday, Feb 20, 2009

Another roller skating cutie and a colored pencil study!

Cardinal à poitrine rose

Aka the Rose-breasted Grosbeak

I bet...

you thought I forgot! Wrong! I was just up late working to make a freelance project deadline, so even though I did it last night, lack of scanner makes it hard to post in a timely fashion, so this will have to do!

from the TF topic, Crane (this one's a gray crested crane to be exact!)

Illustration Friday: "Forgotten"

Blue jays are known for hiding thousands of caches of food and remembering exactly where they put all of them, but I think they're bound to forget where they hid at least a few of them every now and again! (much thanks to the fascinating tv program, "The Life of Birds" with host David Attenborough for this bit of info).

My submission for this week's Illustration Friday.

The strange and fabulous Kakapo parrot

I was watching a fantastic BBC show called "The Life of Birds," by David Attenborough, and there was this segment on the New Zealand Kakapo. Coincidentally, there was a chapter in Douglas Adam's book, "Last Chance to See" about the same parrot; between the time Adams wrote the book and the documentary, the parrot has had a glimmer of hope in its comeback (meaning; thought to be extinct to 86 known surviving parrots left).

Anyway, these little guys are fascinating- they're nocturnal, flightless, and the males have these bowls that they carve out of rock/earth that they use to amplify a large "boom" noise across mountain tops and valleys that they make to attract females. And they also have little whisker like feathers around their beaks. Crazy!

Learn more about these birds (and what's being done to save them!) here

Mountain Quail

Finished off my trip to Joshua Tree earlier today with a hike to 49 Palms Oasis and saw tons of Mountain Quail, so my drawing today is of one! They were so amazingly adorable- snapped some great pics of them a well! Enjoy! (ps- guacho boy is the name of the book from which my new sketch book came from)