Well, it’s the 22nd, and the proboscideans post I promised isn’t ready. Unfortunately, one does have to eat and in my case right now, pay vet bills. About a month ago my old dog Tito (he’s 16) started having what can only be described as night terrors. Something was going on (or perhaps off is a better word) in his head, and he would pace all night long. I haven’t slept a full night, or even a couple hours straight, since it started. Each time I’d think he was finally settling down and I would get comfortable back in bed, I’d hear him up again, panting, his tags jingling softly.

Some pretty good human brains from Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania Veterinary Schools have been working on the problem however, and things are getting better (Tito is actually sleeping peacefully as I write this – probably not for long), but I’m still behind in my work. Lack of sleep isn’t one of the better stimuli for creativity.

Another thing is my own perfectionism. Whenever I draw extinct creatures I want the viewer to feel the life that once animated them as forcefully as I do. All my life there’s been this constant battle between what I can see with my mind’s eye and what my hands can accomplish. In the next day or two, while I still won’t have the whole piece ready, I plan to post the entire process of creating one of the proboscidean drawings from scratch showing all the steps along the way.

In the meantime I’ll post this little scenic.

For over twenty years I’ve done three little images each issue for In Brief, the quarterly review journal of Earth Justice Legal Defense Fund. The cover story this issue was about the hard lessons learned from the damage inflicted by Hurricane Katrina. Whenever I’m given flat land to portray the sky becomes an integral and equally important part of the painting. Using the shafts of light through the layered clouds I was trying to bring both the reality of a clearing storm and the metaphorical promise of renewal into the image. After dealing with the details of anatomy, cloudscapes like this are just relaxing fun.