NEW PIG!

I know, it's a bit soon after dear Bug's passing, but...
Behold Jenny, the new pig!

BUG

My baby Bug... My little hair-eating furball... All I have left are the teeth marks you put in everything.

Your short life, just one year with us... 

I'll miss you.

Paint

Normally I don't like paint, because it's so messy and it covers your line art.
Lately, however, I've been using it more often.
My little sister had her friend over, because they had some rocks they wanted to paint.
(They were trying to make the magic stones from this graphic novel)
The paint was already out, so why not use it... This is what I produced.

It's bigger than it looks, which was even harder. So many layers of paint...

Anyway, it turned out well.  Yes, I photographed it in a tree because the green was a nice contrast. 

So anyway, when the friend saw me painting this, he watched intently and said

"Wow, that's a nice russet." 

It sounded a bit weird coming from a kid, but this kid is possibly more fox-obsessed than I am. 

Russet, being the color of foxes, is his favorite color. 

This morning, I painted again. On feathers this time. I have a box of blue jay feathers that I found when I was lost in the woods with some friends,  (actually the same friend from before, and his older brother. Four children lost in the woods. It's a long story.) and I had recently discovered the art of painting a picture on a feather. Unfortunately, my feathers were tiny, but I did my best. 

Instead of just going ahead and starting right on the bare feather surface, I did a coat of white paint as a base. After that I just drew with Micron pens. It wasn't hard because it was so tiny, (0.20 mm pen tip) but because I couldn't sketch or anything. Freehand is hard. Anyway, after adding some colors with markers, here it is.

Please excuse the large presence of my hand, I just wanted to show you the size. 

(You can even see the smudges on my hand)

So paint can be annoying, but also gratifying. 

That is the lesson I have learned.