Thing in watercolour pencil, inktense, metallic watercolour, and pen & ink

And the kitchen sink, I suppose.

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is creature, and this is...

um...

Well, to be honest, I just turned on the internet radio and freestyled it. Considering the period of music I'm listening to, it could be a transferred hallucination, I suppose.

As usual, my cheap scanner's lost the wash in the background. That totally makes no difference this time, though.

I bet that the scanner's disappointed.



The sad thing is, this is what's finished my current sketchbook. The great thing is, I've finished my current sketchbook. That hardly ever happens.

Moustache in pen & ink

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is moustache.

Professor Arboreous had just started to realise that his dendritic studies might be affecting other parts of his life...

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Ok, this is silly, but it's been a while since I did any random branching so I figured what the heck. I'd like to say that branching -- which is something of a life-long obsession -- is meditative for me, but I have too much trouble focussing on anything for too long to ever hit meditative. I suppose it's just a way to let my hand do something while I'm thinking of other things. In other words, you generally find a lot of branching doodles in my notebook after a staff meeting.

This, by the way, is the longest period at one sitting that I've managed to use a pen since I screwed up my wrist months ago. Still very shaky and I'm sore now, but it's a start at least.

Bird in Hand in watercolour pencil

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is onomatopoeia. And yeah, I'm enough of a language nerd that I didn't have to look it up. The link's just for those of you who might be unfamiliar.

The Black-capped Chickadee (and other chickadees, for that matter) gets its name from the chickadee-dee-dee call it makes. Around here we've nicknamed its whistled song cheeeseburger (you can find it on that last link), but that's another topic altogether. It does help the kids remember it, though.

As a naturalist working (mostly) with children, chickadees have become pretty much my favourite birds. They're around all year, they're vocal, they're interesting to watch, and they don't really give a fig if they are being watched. In fact, with a little patience and some sunflower seeds -- we recommend the small, black oil type -- they can be taught to come right to your hand to feed. I've never done that personally since I'm not a huge fan of encouraging wild animals to come up to humans, but since the chickadee can make a pretty quick getaway it's fairly harmless.

I know that this doodle is really, really rough, but if you'll notice the date of the previous post you'll see that I've been away from the game for months. I've been rehabbing a wrist injury (for rehab read: haven't been able to do eff all except blotch around in my mixed media mess journal), and even now it gets shaky altogether too quickly if my hand tenses up for any length of time.

You know, like to hold a pen. That's a pain, because I really like to fool around with pen and ink.

Ah well, for now we're stuck with my lack-of-painting skills. And hey. Maybe this is the start of being able to work at something for more than half an hour at a time...

Equilateral in pen & ink

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is equality.

Ok, this one threw me. I knew what the obvious current route was (at least amongst American participants who follow the news), but I deal mostly in nature subjects.

You know what? There's no such thing as equality in nature. Things eat other things, and in turn are eaten by other things. Things are outcompeted by other things. Even the classic examples of commensalism and mutualism, upon reexamination, are often being found to be more like parasitism than any kind of equality.

I don't think there is or ever will be such a thing as equality in human society either. All men are not created equal, as much as that sounds good on paper. Beyond the simple fact that some people are born with talents in certain areas that others don't have, we're always going to have inequality. Some are rich, some are poor. One sex (and the sex differs in different cultures) will always lord it over the other. Some people are always going to be seen as leaders -- sometimes simply because of birth -- and some are always going to be seen as followers. And as far as the US's recent steps to marriage equality go (which, to paraphrase The Daily Show, welcome to the 20th Century, folks...), it doesn't matter what the court says, moralistically speaking. There are always, always going to be people out there who refuse to recognise that sort of equal right, just as there are always going to be people who can't figure out why women think that they should get equal pay for equal work.

Sigh. Obviously I'm a bit pessimistic on the whole subject of equality. What to do, then?

Geometry, I guess.

No one can deny the equality of the angles in an equilateral triangle, right? So there you go. Three nested equilateral triangles.Well, actually more than that, but I'll leave you to do the counting. At any rate, that's a fair amount of equality for someone who doesn't really believe that equality's possible.

It's also boring, so I decided to doodle on it a little.

And what should you read into it other than the fact that my injured wrist is still too shaky for me to manage any real drawing? One or two things in my mind, actually, but all things being equal I think I'll leave it to you to decide for yourself.



Oh, and in case anyone wondered, yes. Yes, I did scan this crookedly entirely on purpose. It's not that way on the page.

Old Hat in pen & ink

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is worn. This is an extremely quick doodle of my father's old, worn, and to be honest somewhat grungy Tilley hat.

Oh, wait. Tilley hat, for the non-Canadians out there.

This doodle was quick (and yes, shaky) because my wrist still isn't in any shape to be doing this. Maybe in a couple of weeks, if I don't muck it up again.

When this week's IF word came up it nagged at me a bit since I could have sworn I'd done something for worn before. Sure enough, I had. It was a few years ago now, but if anyone would like to see a much better drawing for the prompt (and a little silliness), check out my original version from June 2009 right here.



Hmm. It's been quite a while since I brought out the little modelling clay men. Maybe it's time for a revival...

Yellow Warbler in Derwent Metallics

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is sweet.

This fellow looks about as shaky as my sprained wrist could make it, but I'm tired of babying the wrist and not drawing so there you go.

The tie-in to the prompt? The song of the Yellow Warbler is usually transliterated as sweet sweet sweet oh so sweet or some variation of that. The song really doesn't sound much like that since it's more of a whistle, but I have to admit that the mnemonic does help me remember the number of  "syllables" in the usual song.

I guess that's the point of having the mnemonic at all, though, isn't it?

Mountain Ash Buds in Art Stix

This week's Illustration Friday prompt is future.

I'd kind of wanted to do something more detailed this time around, but my recovering wrist doesn't like to be out of the brace long enough for pen & ink or anything like that. Macro it is, then, and I got out the Art Stix for a quick doodle of a Mountain Ash (some might know it better as Rowan) flower bud.

It's a scribble, but ah well. It's something, anyway, and I've been busy enough lately that not many other somethings have happened.

And if proto-flowers aren't the ultimate hint of the future this time of year (late spring and all), I don't know what is.