An outdoor meal that was abandoned by humans has become a feast for a flock of chickens and a couple of sparrows. The big rooster is the featured star of the action, strutting across the tablecloth.
Saturday, January 6, 2024
Meyerheim's 'Remains of the Meal'
An outdoor meal that was abandoned by humans has become a feast for a flock of chickens and a couple of sparrows. The big rooster is the featured star of the action, strutting across the tablecloth.
Friday, December 29, 2023
Turkey Consciousness
“But their ability to understand the world goes much further than just communication. I came to realize that these young turkeys in many ways were more conscious than I was”
Saturday, September 30, 2023
How I Paint a Dahlia in Casein
Sunday, September 10, 2023
Spinosaurus Restorations, Step by Step
In this YouTube video, I demonstrate step-by-step process of painting two restorations of the dinosaur Spinosaurus under the direction of Dr. Paul Sereno of the University of Chicago.
Coauthors include Donald M. Henderson, Daniel Vidal, Frank E. Fish, Stephanie L. Baumgart, Tyler M. Keillor, Kiersten K. Formoso, Nathan Myrhvold, and Lauren L. Conroy.
Tuesday, June 13, 2023
Honeybees Can Distinguish a Monet from a Picasso
What are the limits of these abilities? Scientists constructed an experiment to test whether honeybees could recognize individual human artistic styles, such as the Impressionist paintings by Monet vs. Cubist or semi-abstract paintings by Picasso.
The findings show that they can learn to recognize and distinguish one style from another. They can generalize complex visual features even in images they've never seen before.
Given the relatively small size of the bees' brains, which weigh less than a milligram and contain just 960,000 neurons, the scientists argue that this appears to arise from a basic ability to "extract and categorize the visual characteristics of complex images" and is not a "higher cognitive function that is unique to humans."
--
Monday, May 29, 2023
Octopolis
In Australia an unusual society of octopuses has congregated in Jervis Bay, which observers have dubbed "Octopolis."
Octopuses are normally relatively solitary, so this tendency to group together is not fully understood.
Marine biologist Peter Godfrey-Smith reports that he's noticed a lot of "ornery" behavior that resembles fighting, boxing, bullying, and even shooting shell projectiles underwater. He's not completely sure if this is just territorial squabbling or something else.
More at Earth Touch Network.
Friday, May 19, 2023
Dog Art Exhibition in London
There's an exhibition of dog art this summer in London all summer which includes The Old Shepherd's Chief Mourner by Edwin Landseer and Brizo by Rosa Bonheur.
‘Portraits of Dogs: From Gainsborough to Hockney’ will be on display at The Wallace Collection from 29 March to 15 October 2023
Saturday, April 15, 2023
Edward Troye's Horse Paintings
Edward Troye (1808-1874) was a Swiss-American painter who specialized in animal subjects, particularly horses. He was born in Geneva, Switzerland and studied art in Munich, Germany, before immigrating to the United States in 1831.
Tuesday, April 11, 2023
How Birds See Each Other
Sunday, April 9, 2023
Rilke's Panther Poem
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.
As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.
Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.
- English translation by Stephen Mitchell
Thursday, December 15, 2022
The Animal Art of Caroline Clowes
Now there's a free exhibition of original art by Caroline Clowes on view at the Samuel Morse estate in Poughkeepsie, New York through December 30, 2022.
Here's a video with more information.
Monday, October 3, 2022
Bulldog
My parents had a white bulldog named 'Winnie' named after Winston Churchill.
Here's the acrylic-on-colored-craft-foam time lapse process of painting this of dog.
Tuesday, August 16, 2022
A Dinosaur-Eating Mammal
Tuesday, July 26, 2022
Raymond de la Nézière, Animal Artist
Wednesday, May 25, 2022
The Horse Pictures of Eduard Thöny
Eduard Thöny (1866-1950) was known for his excellent draftsmanship.
He loved to include equestrian subjects and often put his horses in dramatic action poses.
See more examples of Eduard Thöny on Wikimedia Commons. (1866-1950)
Previous post on Eduard Thony's Caricatures
Detailed German Wikipedia entry about Eduard Thöny.
Wednesday, March 30, 2022
Feather Identification Websites
Find a feather? What bird is it from?
By law you're not supposed to possess feathers from wild birds (in order to protect birds from being hunted for their feathers), but there are a couple of good websites to help with feather identification anyway.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has a website called Feather Atlas that helps you identify feathers based on color, position, pattern, size, and kind of bird.
Featherbase is another website focusing on bird feathers. The site lays out the feathers of a given bird, and arranging them in groups so you can see the variety of feather types that cover a bird's body.
Sunday, February 6, 2022
Animal Fable Illustrations by E.M. Rachev
Postcards based on Russian folk tales, 1960, E.M. Rachev.
He used animal characters to tell his stories, but of course the allegories were really about human foibles.
"He remembered Siberia as a fantastic land. Black grouses sitting pompously on fir branches in the evenings... Fish and wild ducks swarming the lakes... No end to mushrooms and berries in summer... But when the boy was 14 years old his grandmother died. He decided to go to his mother who at that time lived in Novorosiisk. It took him three months to get there through Russia ravaged by the revolution." |
Saturday, December 25, 2021
Joy the Christmas Donkey
The baby donkey "Peanut's Christmas Joy," or just "Joy" for short, was born 12 years ago.
She arrived in the barn stall early Christmas morning, a complete surprise to the farmer Lenny, who said he didn't even know Peanut was pregnant.
He went in to do the morning chores and noticed Peanut was acting funny. There was a dark shape in the corner. At first he thought a dog had gotten in there. He put Joy in a blanket and let her out into the snow and she met all the other donkeys.
Friday, December 17, 2021
Therianthropy
Therianthropy is the ability to shape-shift between human and animal.
Monday, December 13, 2021
Book Review: 100 Flying Birds
A new book called 100 Flying Birds: Photographing the Mechanics of Flight delivers a helpful collection of images in a beautiful and useful form.
Author and photographer Peter Cavanagh has documented the flight poses of a variety of species, from swans and geese to hummingbirds to eagles and owls.
The photos are sharp and clear, reproduced full-page along with the author's commentary on the facing page. The text presents the context of the shot, the mechanics of the flight pose, or insights about behavior or the environment.
That text combined with the photos makes this an unusually welcome resource for birdwatchers or ornithological artists who want a better understanding of their subject.
--
100 Flying Birds: Photographing the Mechanics of Flight, by Peter Cavanagh, Firefly Books, 320 pages, all color, 11 x 11 inches.
Mr. Cavanagh curated the exhibition "How Birds Fly" exhibit at Seattle's Museum of Flight in 2015.
Photos by Peter Cavanagh (@howbirdsfly on Twitter).