Animal art – Jasmine Collins

Tiny Art

I picked up a cute little sketch pad yesterday and have been filling it with drawings of weird little critters.

A black widow with her egg sac and two spiderlings

She’s not a widow, but my little cupboard spider and her children were very helpful models for this one.

I got some of these guys a while back. They’re impressively low maintenance and entertaining pets, as insects go. As their name implies, they immediately give up and pretend to be dead when disturbed. I generally avoid triggering it, although unlike some other species it doesn’t seem to be a particularly taxing experience for them. One of them was kind enough to pose for a reference pic.

When they’re not pulling their little “woe is me, for I have perished” act, they just trundle around in their sandy habitat, irritate each other with extremely low-speed collisions, and munch on whatever organic matter has been presented to them that week. They’re scavengers, so they’re not picky.

I aspire to be this chill about dealing with things that bug me, since I know I’ll never be truly unbothered. Just corpsing it up and waiting for the source of irritation to get bored and wander away is probably a solid approach in a lot of situations, though.

Odds and Ends

Pen and ink sketch of a very silly little white cockerel

Freshly picked blue raspberries (yes, that’s a real fruit)

I got to harvest the first blue raspberries from the plant I got several years back, and they’re a delight. It’s an old variety that can’t be sold in stores, because they bruise and go over-ripe far too quickly to survive shipping. Whether or not the flavoring in candies and drinks is actually based on the fruit is apparently up for debate, but having tasted them now I can easily believe that it was. They’re less tart than a regular raspberry, and they do have their own unique flavor, although it’s hard to pin down.

They do kind of just taste a bit blue, in the same way that blueberries do. That’s not as silly as it sounds, since the pigments that create the blue color in the skin of blueberries also contribute to their flavor, and they’re present in these raspberries as well.

Friendly Axolotl

Got some new pens and had fun trying them out while making this little buddy.

Tapir Folk

I’ve been in a fantasy creature mood, so here are some shy forest folk working on their banana orchard.

Black and white sketch of a tapir person teaching their little tapir child how to tend a newly planted baby banana plant. A wild guinea pig sits under an older plant, and a carved toy capybara and caiman sit on a log in the foreground.

Baby Roc

I wanted to try out a slightly different art style for fun, so I aimed for a more sketchy and dark vibe than I usually do and drew a “little” hatchling roc. Rocs are giant mythical predator birds, and I am a fan. It really needs a sacrificial elephant for scale, but I didn’t think of that till it was finished. Still, it was fun, and I think it turned out pretty cute and appropriately fierce.

February Life Update

My birthday is coming up at the end of the month, so that’s exciting. I’ll be thirty one! I suspect it’ll feel very much like being thirty.

I finally got a treadmill last week, and I’m actually surprised by how much I love it. I really like walking, and I already spend a truly excessive amount of time listening to audiobooks and watching youtube videos about weird stuff, so now those activities can be combined. This makes me feel much less useless and floppy.

I’ve been iron deficient for quite a while, and I found out that the supplementation I’ve been doing hasn’t actually been working all that well, so that’s fun. Having shitty blood really saps energy and focus, and the things required to make me absorb iron better are all also things that throw my potentially very painful stomach issues into overdrive. It’s a wee bit frustrating.

On the bright side, though, I did some vital houseplant maintenance and drew some tropical fish.

A moorish idol (top) and banggai cardinalfish (bottom) that I got to see at the Seattle aquarium recently, drawn in black pen and colored pencils. Sorry about the lighting on this pic. It’s always hard to find enough light to show the colors without washing out the black a bit.

One of my African violets was looking pretty sad, so I trimmed and repotted it.

Inktober Sketches

For those who don’t know, inktober is an event where people try to finish at least one pen and ink sketch every day in October. I didn’t get a sketch done every single day, but I aimed for most days and didn’t stress about it. Here are the ones I deem decent and complete enough for sharing.

Since I knew I was gonna miss days anyway, I focused more on picking a variety of subjects, including some things I hadn’t really done before, like the ferns and the leaf insect. It was fun, and I’m glad I stuck with it!