Allligator lizard

Just completed this drawing of a Thai goanna. couple of years since I was there, but still. Normally, I'd never chase up an animal on the web just so I could include it in my travel diary, but this guy was different. I'd see him some days, foraging around the pond near my room, swimming unlike any lizard I'd ever seen before. I watched him for ages, gracefully swinging his whole body, about 1.2 metres long. He was gliding through the water with his arms and legs by his side. Not like the frantic paddling of the water dragons at home. On days when I sat there with a camera, waiting, he'd keep away. Still, sitting by a pond, hunting dragons was a peaceful way to finish the working day, which was otherwise occupied with post tsunami messiness. Way too great an image not to be recorded in the diary.

Flight of a pelican v2

... so now I know that gifs aren't animated in blogger... these are alternative, static versions, which I kinda like for the way they catch the movement in different ways. The top version taught me a lot- made it by accident, while making the animation. The second is how it appears on my wall- a true life photo of the original pastel. I'm still playing with the best way to get the feeling of movement in place.

Flight of a pelican

Another drawing, of sorts... an animated gif of a photo of a pastel is still classed as a drawing, right?
I love pelicans. Love to watch them fly. Cumbersome bodies which if you looked at them objectively, you'd you say 'no way, that thing can't fly', then they spread their wings and are a graceful as anything you can imagine. Ideally, this image would capture their flight- the way they soar across the water, powered only by momentum and maybe catching the thermals closest to the water's surface, hundreds of metres with barely a twitch of a feather. Cool. I'll try again one day.

Blue Tongued Lizard

Here's a drawing I did a while back of a bluetongue lizard I found in my backyard. It's part of a collection of images I thought I'd lost forever on a dead laptop under my desk. I managed to fire it up for half an hour last night- long enough to extract a flash drive's worth of music, images, stuff.

He was a peaceful little critter, who I found while digging a vegetable space, and nearly cut in half with a spade. The leaves were from an entirely different place- a plane tree in Richmond, which I drew while waiting for friends to get home and let me in.