Burning Instinct

I went with the first thing that came to mind when I read the Illustration Friday theme this week.

You see, Wednesday night I had a little kitchen incident. I grabbed a dish I had just pulled out of the oven, and I burned all five of my fingers--3 kind of badly. It was pretty stupid, and it caused me a very sleepless night and a day of pain, which thankfully has subsided now.

But this isn't an illustration of that event. This is my worst burn: The time I tripped over the cord to our electric griddle/frypan while my brother and I were making pancakes. The pan fell, and by instinct, I reached out to catch it. I burned my entire right palm and a fair amount of finger, if I remember correctly (it was...a long time ago).
Given my recent event, this is what popped into my mind for instinct.

It might not have been so traumatic at the time if the pain and pancakes actually talked.

Also, I haven't had much time to cruise the many illustrations over the last few weeks' themes, so I was very surprised and honored to discover this. Cool.

They're Baaaack!

Both the Portland Raptorcam and the West Virginia Eaglecam are up and running!! The red-tailed hawks don't seem to have eggs yet, but the eagle pair has two that were laid over Presidents' Day weekend. I wanted to watch the Eagles build their nest, but I'm not sure there are pictures of that since, according to their biologist observer, they built their nest in its old location (not the one they used last year), and the camera had to be moved. Anyway, exciting! There is also news of the eaglet from last year who is apparently still recovering successfully from the effects of avian pox. Yay!

Be warned--the Raptorcam still has the intro-ad that startles me everytime with its sound.

BTW: Eagle pictures snicked from the posted 2-17 slideshow on the WVEC website. Thanks Eaglecam guys!

Celebrate

This week's Illustration Friday theme is celebrate. This is how I imagine kitties celebrate.

This is probably how my kitties will celebrate the silencing of the horrible and roaring vacuum monster, which terrorized them while I actually vacuumed my "catch-all" room (formerly known as the computer/sewing/guest room) in preparation of some -gasp!- sewing.

Just a line drawing again this week, this time in pencil with a little digital

color for Spot's favorite toy.
Now to head on over and see how others have imagined celebrate. I haven't even peeked yet!

Truffle

I thought a truffle, being such a delicacy, would be a delicate but talented citizen of Insalataville. Can Truffle lead Pearil to the lair? Or will the odd and overpowering mixture of odors do her? ...him? in?

Truffle is my first character with actual texture. Of course you have to click to enlarge to see it. Learn more about paint shop every day.

Bloodhound

I would have posted this earlier, but I was working on what Truffle would look like. Black or White? And what does a truffle look like? Guess we'll see.... Stay tuned.

Time

Time. When I thought about this theme, I immediately thought about how sometimes time moves quickly and sometimes it seems to slow down to just a crawl, and how those dragging moments of time seem so much larger than the bits that fly by. I thought about what makes time slow down. I tried to remember all the things I've done that sped by. There are a lot of books in there.... Then I realized that what was in my head was beyond the capabilities of my 'hobby' status of artist. So here it is. I did this in black and blue ball point and struggled while my scanner didn't pick up the lighter shading. So much to learn.

Time can be such a gift. And what spirals out of that gift are all the little moments that make life full but fleeting, punctuated by those yawning slow parts, including anticipation, which often leads to a gift.

Flawed

OK, what I really wanted to draw was an empty glass--flawed because it contained no beer. I also thought of trying to capture what my head feels like with a migraine. Flawed turned out to be a harder theme than I thought it would be. So here I have a little sketch of my kitty, Myrna. Myrna has asthma. She took some medicine for a while that made most of her teeth fall out. So she has one fang. Does this make her flawed, though?

Black cats are hard to draw. They are almost impossible to photograph. Perhaps the flaw is in even trying to capture her beautiful fur. Hmm.

Red Herring

And who will turn out to be the bloodhound of the fruit/vegetable world of Insalataville? Food for thought. Heh.