Fun with Taxidermy

Had a nice visit to the La Sierra University World Museum of Natural History. It has all kinds of taxidermied animals; reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals. Many are very well done, not the weird shrivelly creatures you sometimes see (a lot were prepared by freeze-drying). But since the collection was still being worked on, a lot of animals didn't have labels.

We had some time alone inside to sketch. The guy manning the office came over to see what was going on after I made a bunch of noise ripping paper out of my sketchbook and rattling around my watercolor set. Later, a big bunch of people came in on some kind of campus tour. Since I was sitting on the floor, leaning on another display case, I was either in their way or they'd try to be sneaky about looking at what I was doing. On to the sketches!

The museum said it has the largest collection of Southeast Asian birds in the US. There were many colorful birds of unknown species. The ones I painted had labels: two hornbills (a man said about the Helmeted Hornbill "That's the ugliest thing I've ever seen") and a cuckoo. The coolest birds were up too high to see while sitting and I it's hard to stand and hold all my watercolor stuff. I was kind of lazy with my color mixing on these. It's fun to draw birds that are holding still!

There were strange groupings of mammals; armadillos, monkeys, civets, baby hoofed animals. The bushdog looked a little off, but I liked its curled tail and shocked expression. I think the little armadillo was a six-banded. The capybara looked kind of mad too.

Dollaridoo

One of my newest booky-wooks is a field guide to Australian birds. How I'd love to to use it in the field, looking at birds, in Australia!

The picture of the Dollar Bird was very cute, so I drew one spending its dollars on street snacks. Note the well-researched, lifelike vendor on the right (I couldn't picture what those cart thingies look like).

They're called dollar birds because of the little white circles on their wings.

Bwa-ha-ha!

Last post of the month! I saw some Inca terns at the zoo a while back. They had interesting long curly white feathers by their bright red beaks. I sketched a few with some color notes (which, after finding some references online just now, I see weren't very accurate!). Recently, I saw a picture of one in a book and was reminded of my first thought: they looked like old-timey moustached villains. I'm sure this one is thinking of tying a girl to the railroad tracks or something.