Hear Ye, Hear Ye... in inktense

You wonder how they do it, of course: finding the feeder seconds after you've filled it, locating the new nest box, knowing exactly when to swarm Tippi Hedren...

Part of it could be an eye in the sky -- no one's better suited for it -- but I have a feeling that it has more to do with the Town Crier. After all, it's always been his (traditionally his. Sorry, ladies) business to tell everybody everything he knows about the latest news at the top of his voice.

Erm... I should mention that this week's Illustration Friday prompt is messenger, shouldn't I?

Merry Christmas, all. And stay away from seagulls and crows, just in case. And maybe even phone booths, if there are any still about...

Sink in pen & ink and watercolour

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is sink.

Winter always gives me that sinking feeling.

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As usual, the scanner's ignored some of the background. That's ok, though -- there wasn't much to ignore this time.

Funny thing? Up to the chin in snow was the first thing I thought of for sink, but I live in an area that gets relatively little snow compared to the east (erm, knock wood).

Other funny thing? The sinking person's wearing my university colours. Didn't even notice until I scanned it. Ah well. Green and Gold, Quaecumque Vera...

Walnut in pen & ink

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is separated. The two halves of this walnut shell have definitely been separated, and the shell's been separated from its meat as well.

Before I go any further, I've just noticed how scribbly today's effort is. Scribbly mood, I guess.

I love Christmas nuts -- nuts in the shell, I mean. I look forward to them all year. I wish they were available all year, to be honest. Nuts in the shell seem a lot fresher, and I like the challenge of working to get to them. Besides, nuts in the shell seem to leave a person satisfied after having eaten a lot less than you would shelled nuts.

Well, that's the way it works for me, at least.

Since I was a kid, walnuts presented a special challenge come Christmastime. I always made an extra effort to try to get the shell halves separated without cracking them. Sometimes it seemed silly, since leaving the shell intact made it that much harder to get the good stuff out, but I still prided myself on getting those shells open intact. I saved them, too.

What? There's always uses for walnut shells. They make great squirrel ornaments. And skunks. And mangers, if that's more your inclination for things to hang on the tree.

A few years ago I was looking for something in my old closet at my father's place, and I happened upon one of my forgotten walnut stashes. Two zip-bags full of walnut shell halves. I honestly don't remember when I put them there, but it must have taken at least a couple of Christmases to get that many shells. And then? I put them away like they were treasure. Kind of made me think that I just may have a problem...

Anyway. Those particular shells got taken to the nature centre where I work, where they've been used for quite a few craft days. Told you walnut shells were useful.

Today's featured shell (a fairly small, unbleached walnut. I think they taste better, to be honest) won't be squirreled away in the closet, I promise. I was thinking that I might paint it. Paint on it, I mean; not make a painting of it. No idea why, but if the results are at all interesting I imagine they'll get posted here.

Goodness knows that I've posted weirder things.

Work stuff

Yesterday was Ground Squirrel Day for yours truly. Richardson's Ground Squirrels, for anyone who'd like to look them up. These pictures are meant to be a bit on the cartoonish side, but still be fairly identifiable. Do I like them? They'll do. But for the record, I suck at ground squirrels. Plants work better for my brain.

 Adult

 Burrow

 Hibernation

Young

Incidentally, if you're ever planning to draw newborn ground squirrels (and I just know that you are), judging from my resource material the best colour match for their skin tone is raspberry. Who knew?

Round in inktense pencil

Do inktense pencils count as ink or watercolour? They're ink-based pencils, after all, and once they're dry they aren't moving...

Anyway. This week's Illustration Friday prompt is round. These? Bubbles, I guess. More or less. I don't really have much to say about them (a shock to anyone who's familiar with this blog, I'm sure) other than they were kind of fun.

The cheap scanner has, as usual, killed some of the colour here. My oranges have turned redder than I wanted and the green a bit yellower, but the idea's still there (such as it was). What's missing a little is that the brush strokes were intentionally messy. Now they look more like mistakes, but whatever. In the spirit of round I'm gonna roll with it.

Conch in pen & ink

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is silent. Today's doodle features my family conch shell. I'll get to the family part in a bit.

First of all, this thing's massive. It's nothing like the dainty, thin conch you might buy as a souvenir in Hawaii (and I know that because we also have a souvenir conch from Hawaii). It's thick, it's heavy, and it has layers almost like a sedimentary rock. It also has a hole drilled partially through it (I imagine the "partially" part was because the thing is really thick) so it could be hung on a nail. The side that was facing the wall is abraded smooth in places, because it hung for a long time that way. The rest of it is beaten up and scarred from a lot of years of abuse.

The shell is about a hundred years old, or probably more. A shell from an animal that lived a silent life in a fairly silent world (well, compared to ours). An animal that's been silent for a long time even if it could make a noise, and now its shell sits silently on a shelf.

The irony here? My great grandmother used it to call the men in from the field for meals.

A silent animal's shell prized for its carrying sound. I find that kind of neat, actually.

There's another part of this story that I find mainly confusing, though. I know for sure that my great grandmother used the shell, because my grandmother witnessed it every day as a child. The thing is... this was in Southern Alberta at the turn of the last century. Land-locked Alberta at a time when travel wasn't exactly easy and definitely wasn't cheap. How exactly did it get there?

No one I've talked to has the remotest idea.

The conch, of course, is silent on the subject.

Pet camouflage? In pen & ink

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is stripes. And this?

I dunno.

Something really quick, because I'm not going to be around on the weekend.

I have no idea why it's so fat. Or peeved. Ah well.