these guys live in the antarctic like other penguins. i can’t believe they can dive something like one hundred seventy five metres and will swim nearly two hundreds miles to get food. talk about a trip to the grocery store. i find it interesting that they form nests in part with stones. penguins are wicked. adélie penguins in moleskine.

i started drawing an american bison for this bestiary of mine and started with a photo that i thought had an interesting perspective to start with. i’m trying to keep up with experiments while still working on my actual projects. so i took a gander at illustration friday’s theme and it is, weirdly enough, perspective. i’ve been wanting to try taking ball point pen drawings further as the basis for an illustration instead of using brush and ink so i thought i’d give it a go.

i realised too late in this experiment that it looks a bit barren without any real sort of background. i thought about incorporating whatever symbolic imagery that bison might have in different cultures. it seems that they’re mostly used as state symbols or in flags. so this is a flag of sorts, but the blue is supposed to suggest the sky.

if you can imagine yourself on the plain and you’re sharing opposing perspectives with this animal, your perspective might be that this is such a magnificent animal. his disposition might suggest that his perspective might be that he doesn’t like you on his land. apparently these are really dangerous animals to be around; they can outrun us and will attack if provoked. so you’re being warned as well.

not sure if i really like the result but it was worth a shot. i’ll probably give this a few more tries to decide once and for all. the original drawing is also below.

i started just drawing animals for a change. at first i did animals which i was just plainly interested in drawing and found that i loved the freedom and difference in depicting these beings. so i kept going. while the drawings are and will be scattered among many sketchbooks i’m sure, i think i’d like to put them together and make a book out of it. i did some research and it doesn’t look any modern bestiaries exist? i guess they’re called the internets. or wikipedia. nevertheless, i think i’d like to add an illustrated companion to all of that.

it’ll be a while before i finish this but i’ll try and post every animal i draw (which i hope to be every mammal, at the very least). for the most part, this will go alphabetically but i’ll take requests to have some done earlier. let me know if you think you’d like one.

aardvarks!

pound for pound, these guys have one of the highest bite force quotients of mammalian carnivores. apparently, their hunting percentages are pretty good too. and they chirp! unfortunately, they too are endangered. they remind me of hyenas although they’re apparently weaker than those scavengers, one on one. i thought wild dog was a bit of a vague name but the naming controversy for these mammals leads some to prefer to call these guys “painted hunting dogs.” lycaon pictus in moleskine.

i’m not too sure why i’m a bit fascinated with these birds (aside from the way the look) but i think it’s because of the different interpretations they lead to, depending on the culture. they’re scavengers, plain and simple. they’re smart but they apply their intelligence mostly for their scavenging ways. historically, those in the west seem to have thought them to be more ominous and negative on account of their blackness and what they eat. yet in parts of asia, they were thought of as gods. they’re just there, to me; just part of the chain of things. i didn’t know that they’re the official bird of the yukon. corvus corax in moleskine, 9×10″

i seem to do a lot of portraits but i do enjoy drawing the odd animal or two, among other things. i do prefer candid images or those that are simply uncharacteristic of the subject in terms of general perception. pandas always seemed to me to be rather harmless, sedentary beings so i thought that i would try one that looked, well, angry. i knew that they like to mow down on some bamboo action usually but i didn’t know that it is actually 99% of their diets. they are still taxonomically deemed to be carnivorous though and they do crave the odd bit of meat, fish, eggs or what have you.

i’m also fond of this checkered/basketweave texture/pattern as of late. i suppose i’m reminded slightly of pixels as well. in retrospect i probably should’ve tried more of a gradual enlargement of the ‘fadeout’ to the larger patches but hey. hindsight is a friend that shows up the party invited but a bit late sometimes. an angry asian ailuropoda or my boy dj panda in moleskine, 9×10″

yes this is a double post to i.f. sorry, couldn’t resist.

i love that these birds can hover but i didn’t realise that they can also fly backwards. i had seen so many images of them mowin’ down on nectar but i never thought to secondarily observe their predatory nature. having the highest metabolism of just about all animals, they typically eat more than their weight in food daily. definitely one of my favourite birds. ballpoint pen in moleskine, 9×10″.

10.04.2009: illustration friday‘s theme this week is fleeting and while i have thinking about starting from scratch with one of their themes (which i have yet to do) this one came to mind for a few reasons.

what i didn’t know about these creatures is that their sense of hearing and smell are terrific. apparently elephants can also hear through their trunks, which are sensitive to vibrations. this means communicating over distances that can be several kilometers away. they have built in telephones! they can hear through the ground! the rub? their sight isn’t so great usually. 8″ x 10″ in moleskine.

while i’m not quite losing my hair, my memory seems to be fading at an alarming rate. perhaps that’s why i have some strange interest in these creatures. they’re probably smarter than i am on average too, relatively speaking. it’s sad to me that their only natural predators are humans. loxodonta africana in moleskine.