SB Project: Sketches 33 and 34
December 20, 2010
I adore bees. They’re great. 🙂 I played around with using some acrylics to add highlights and the pollen stuck to the bee.
Leeches have pain killers and anticoagulants in their saliva to make the feeding process as easy and safe as possible for them. This one is pretty full. I’ve never had a leech on me. You?
8 Comments
leave one →
we are looking into getting honeybees soon. probably not this spring, but next.
and as for leeches, don’t get me started! i love them!!
i have had many for pets; the majority are not blood-suckers- but scavengers, they nurture their young, seen up close they can have beautiful patterns, the swim so gracefully, and watching them climb up the glass of a fishbowl is endlessly entertaining.
i have been planning a leech tattoo for years now! (don’t tell my mom)
and the only time i ever had one on me was at the white bridge in new lebanon, i was maybe 12.
i won’t lie, it totally freaked me out, but i didn’t feel a thing!
Aw, I’m so envious! I would love to have beeeeeeeees. 🙂
They nurture their young? I’ve got to go read about this. How did you get your pet leeches? From the pond near your house? Where are you thinking of getting the leech tatt?
Haha yeah, I remember once when we were little Willie had one or two on his feet and it freaked me out!
i go to a pond that’s a couple miles away, and get mud from the bottom, and there’s usually a leech or two. all the ones i’ve had are small, less than an inch. i had one named olympia for a while i college, she had a bunch of babies.
i think i would get the tattoo somewhere on my arm, i want it to look like a textbook illustration. i should have you design it for me!
Aw, now I want a pet leech. 😦 I’ve actually always wanted a vampire bat. I have plenty of blood; I can share!
Haha that would be so awesome! I’ve always really loved textbook illustrations, especially black and white line diagrams.
i’m especially attached to the ‘golden guide’ illustrations– we inherited grandma’s collection- remember she kept them in the laundry room?
they are filled with her notes in the margins, random crayon scribblings of wayward boys, and even some scissor attacks, presumably for some school report (to my horror, some of the pages in the ‘pond life’ book are partially in shreds)
do you guys have good ponds in kentucky?
i was always so jealous you had a pond in your yard!
here is the style i’m looking for in my tattoo, although it’s a little static.
I’m not sure I remember the golden guide books… I bet I’d recognize them if I saw them but I can’t picture them. Haha, I can imagine your disgruntlement (wow, apparently that’s actually a word? I thought I was just making it up!) at the defacement of the pond life section!
Actually, surface water in KY is extremely rare due to the karst topography here. There’s an upper layer of sandstone (non-porous) over lots and lots of limestone (porous and easily dissolved by the mild carbonic acid in water), and in many areas there are gaps in the sandstone with allow water to get to the limestone and form caves. Mammoth Cave is the biggest example of the caves here, but they’re all over the place, and even in areas where there aren’t caves big enough for people to go into, water still forms channels and gets underground via sinkholes. So basically, almost all the water around here is subterranean. There are a few rivers and lakes, but almost no small bodies of water.
The caves are pretty insanely awesome though!
Aw, cute little leeches. :> What type do you want? I’m not sure I could design one that was cool enough looking for a tattoo, but I could give it a shot!
Damn, you’re a drawing machine! One post after another! I wish I had more free time to compete with you! Geez!
The leech reminded me of an old Ninja Turtle comic I just read where a leech mutates from sucking one of the turtles blood. Leeches are so interesting. Like how they’re used to treat certain ailments.
Anyways, great exploration with the media, as usual!
I’ve been trying to get the moleskine finished by January 15, so I’ve had to do one sketch a day for a about a month. I think I have five or six pages left…
Yeah, medicinal leeches are pretty fascinating! They’re really useful for areas where tissue needs increased blood flow, like skin grafts and reattached fingers and toes. Apparently medicinal leeches only need to eat about twice a year!
Thanks Spen. ❤