Thank you so much for your inspiring welcome into the world of blogging. Supposedly, when you left a comment, I also received it as an email. Well, I apparently didn’t budget enough space and my server stopped sending them along. I realized immediately that I wouldn’t be able to do this every day, but I wanted to try to write to all of you individually after yesterday’s first post to express my gratitude. I haven’t been able to do that, and if I missed you or I didn’t get an email I could reply to, I’m sorry.

I’m brand new at this. Drawing is so much easier. I’m sure I’ll get to thank everybody eventually and add links to your websites, but please don’t feel ignored; I’m overwhelmed. I’m not sure I realized what I was getting in to, but it IS fun.

When in doubt, post a picture

A few people have asked what the animal approaching me in the header is. It’s the last and largest of a group of pig-like Artiodactyls called Entelodonts. This specific genus is Daeodon (formerly Dinohyus). He really was 6 foot or more to the top of his back and likely had a disposition to match his appearance. Concentrating on that knobbed skull, I sketched Daeodon a dozen times before I colored the drawing in the header. Here are two of those early sketches. Daeodon lived during the early to early-mid Miocene, about 20 million years ago.

Now for some Weasel Words

It’s hard for me to post just a sketch, so here’s a close-up of a little long-tailed weasel (Mustela frenata) I did as part of my favorite ever wrap-around book cover. Click here to see the whole illustration before all the wording was added. It was for a reprinting of the Sally Carrighar 1943 nature classic, One Day On Beetle Rock, and was published by a wonderful little outfit in Berkeley, California called Heyday Books. While now it seems an overly anthropomorphic look at the lives of the creatures it portrays, for its time it was ground-breaking. The book tells of the events on an early summer’s day on and around Beetle Rock (a real place with a nice visitors’ center) in Sequoia National Park.

Long-tailed weasels live throughout the United States and southern Canada, but only in the Southwest do they have the white facial markings of our little girl here. I say girl, because the animal in the book was a female with 5 kits. I originally drew her with a rather tattered underside from nursing those 5 kits, but this look is undoubtedly better for sales.

I’m sure I’ve read a majority of all the research papers ever written on the three North American species of weasels, and someday, when I’m more settled in, I’ll bore you to tears with more than you ever wanted to know about the varmints. And as I’ve spent too much of every day in the (whatever passes for) “woods” near where I happen to be living, I’ve been lucky enough to see a number of long-tailed and two short-tailed individuals. The least weasel is still out there waiting for me.

And now for some Color…or Not

I’ve received a couple of complaints about the black background to this blog. In my Olduvai logo, the lava-colored lettering contrasts better against black and it just kind of grew from there. Now I like it, but then when I type and proof all the words, I’m doing it black on white. If reading white on black is a pain in the eyes, brain or monitor for too many of you, I’ll change it.