We'll Miss You Boomer

Lots 'o images today, and I even made an effort to not go too overboard. Art first:

That raccoon skull sketch helped propel me into doing several ball point pen and gouache studies, mostly from life.

Cat skull. 

Sun Bear, Thompson's Gazelle, Mandrill, Ethiopian Wolf, all referenced from random internet pix.

Some roses I cut that wilted way too fast.

Cactus and succulent obsession. I gotta draw more of these, they're pretty difficult but they have the most amazing growth patterns. I'm also trying to ID several mystery cacti, but it's insanely difficult due to somewhat poor classification systems. And I'm a noob. Now for pix:

Early March was my Grandpep's 90th birthday. He lives in Florida, so we had a little family reunion there. Got to see almost everyone, got mildly sick, walked on the beach nearly every day, ate tons of fish, as well as some Bowhead Whale blubber that my uncle's girlfriend brought down from Alaska. 

My housemate's cat got knocked up and had kittens. Super cute, but 6 cats is too many cats to have in a house. Luckily they all found homes. Get your cats fixed! 

Pretty old pic, taken on February 4, and we picked and ate it on February 18. Delicious fractals. 

Need more cacti. Watching that one in the middle bloom was amazing. Just a little one day event and then it was spent. I wish I could have time-lapse filmed it. 

Where the magic happens. Focusing on tomatoes and peppers this year. The massive bush in the back is catnip. Leftover winter lettuce patch and green onion gone to seed, three tomatoes (Early Girl, Green Zebra, Orange Russian), four peppers (Chocolate Bell, Mucho Nacho Jalapeno, Thai Dragon, Apache).

Cleared this space out and planted nasturtium, Sunsugar tomato, pimento, basil, and zinnia. Also more Thai Dragon and Apache peppers in pots. I kind of want to adopt them out, we don't really have any more room.

R.I.P Boomer the Black Legged Seriema. Had to put her down today.   :( She was one of my favorite birds at the bird show. We'll miss you.

Year of Black Water Snake

4 months is a long time to not post. Winter is a fairly inactive time for me, I'm very much looking forward to more sun and warmth. 

I did several mini gouache paintings of birds as last minute x-mas gifts for people. I need to do some more, I didn't get to gift everyone I meant to. I also forgot to scan four of them before I gave them away, oops. This is a Sandhill Crane.

American Kestrel and Peregrine Falcon

Greg and I started making feather and bead earrings, we'll have an Etsy account up soonish under the name Bird Droppings Crafts. These feathers are from the rear end region of a Scarlet Macaw. They are 100% poop free and worthy of being next to your face.

Greg models some Emu feather earrings. Also a good pic of his tat. I tattooed everything there except the hawk. Gotta give it a little touch up soon. 

The Winter Solstice Rabbit Harvest. Mike (in the back) looks a little disturbed. Killing ain't pretty, but we did our best to do it respectfully. 

 Meat face. Personally, I find this image both fascinating and beautiful. I tried to save this batch of skulls, but some critter decided to eat them. We're going about it properly this time, I just wanted to see if I could leave them out. We really try to make use of every part of our rabbits. We save and dry the feet, I'm working on brain tanning the pelts, we preserve the skulls. The only things that really get "wasted" are the entrails, which I leave out for the feral cats to eat, and the cooked bones.

BBQ rabbit, so delicious.

They get along.