so if you’re ever asked to describe an arctic skua in a word or two (i know i have), you can simply answer with: kleptoparasite; or, parasitic jaeger. jaeger is german for hunter. they do find their own food (eggs, small birds & mammals, fish) but their hunting methods are a bit different, i’d say. they spend a fair amount of time stealing food from others. they are pirates…of the avian variety. let’s be clear though, they don’t just, you know, sneak into the dens of other animals and yoink some food. no no. they team up during flight and body check their victims into dropping the food they caught and reap their rewards. they genuintely rob their victims. i always thought that if it occurs in nature it’s a good model for whatever you’re adapting that principle on…i guess i’ll draw the line here. a bit of etymology: skua means seagull in old norse. stercorarius parasiticus in moleskine.

so finally (at least to me), the difference between hares and rabbits? hares are bigger. longer ears. taller hind legs. i find it interesting that they can be loners but you can also find them in groups of thousands. i’d love to see that. thousands of arctic hares! i’d probably miss them though. it’d probably be winter and i’d probably not seem them camouflaged in the tundra. also, i wouldn’t be out in the dead of winter in a patch tundra. i kind of like that during mating season, they pair off and do their own thing. they establish their own territory away from others. and crazier still, they can run up to sixty kilometres an hour! what?! lepus arcticus in moleskine.

i think we all have a bit of knowledge on ants. they live in really intricate colonies, sometimes underground, sometimes in wood, or sometimes not at all (depending on the species). their strength to weight ratio is incredible. there’s usually one queen in a colony. there are over ten thousand different species. they burn under focused light from a magnifying glass. i didn’t know that worker ants are typically female. and the males, well, they just mate with the queen. they possibly die afterward too. i’ve always found their method of communication fascinating and i didn’t learn this until my final year of university. a colleague’s thesis revolved around basing network routing rules on the chemical / pheromone based communication that ants use. as they travel, specifically in search of food, they leave a trail of breadcrumbs in the form of their pheromones. ants that successfively follow the trails sense the stronger or more, um, pheromonic trails and reinforce the “scent” as they follow the trail to the food source. the weaker trails tend to vanish. it works in nature, so why not try it elsewhere, right?

national geographic says that these are possibly the ugliest animals on earth. poor guys. they need love too, right? you might remember one such fish from a certain disney movie about a certain clownfish (link to appear when they’re drawn…if i remember). the largest of these fish (of which there are hundreds of different of types apparently) are over three feet long. that’s over a hundred pounds of ugly-fish! not my words, national geographic’s i swear. what’s crazier is that their mouths are flexible enough for them to be able to eat prey that is double their size. so if you are one such fish, don’t call them ugly and don’t look at their fishing rods dorsal protrusions. anglerish in moleskine.

just a quick little ditty for illustration friday this week. the theme is soaked. i thought i’d take a different perspective on the meaning.

these birds are so massive that they prefer to inhabit moutainous or ocean regions with strong winds so that they can glide more easily. i’m talking thirty pounds with a near eleven foot wing span. huge. they’re actually vultures (strange nomenclature in my mind) and as such feed on dead stuff, sorry, carrion. males have these offshoots from their snouts/beak called a caruncle – another interesting word. both males and females are bald and have white collars though these are more prevalent in males. i didn’t know that these birds are the national symbols for argentina, bolivia, chile, colombia, ecuador and peru. it’s interesting to me that these birds feed on the dead yet in andean mythology the birds are associated with a sun deity, essentially as ruler of the upper world, and are a symbol of health and power. andean condors in moleskine.

i played around with all manner of colouring for this after i brought it into photoshop and while i found certain results interesting, i opted for the most minimal. here were a few of those experiments.

decent contrast here but the details of the original drawing kind of got lost.

another alternative:

i tried to let the background provide some contrast and restore some of the detail.

overall, i actually liked the process that went into achieving the two draft versions but i didn’t like that i lost the detail that i feel needs to be seen. finding that process was a happy accident, just not one that jives with this portrait i think. i guess the lesson for me was that i can’t always be calling an audible on the final output. i should work on planning more…maybe. matt berninger of the national.

considering the saturation of canadian politics in and around this popsicle stand, i decided to draw the (major?) candidates for our nation’s captain’s chair. i’m not overly political usually so rather than try and get exact likenesses, i just tried to let go. i guess if i were pro-any-party, i probably would’ve focused on getting the leader’s portrait right. if i’m not mistaken, a similar situation almost caused an election not to long again, which prompted this little doodle. we shall see what happens. stephen harper, jack layton, gilles duceppe, and michael ignatieff in moleskine.