Catpaw – diary of an angry cat

Pancake – noun 1. a thin flat cake used to absorb a maximum amount of syrup. Used as a convenient method for syrup intake.

Hmm… nothing better than a big feed of pancakes on a cold morning. But if I’m honest, I have to admit, pancakes are nothing more than an excuse to have eat lots and lots and lots of maple syrup. If I could I’d just forgo the pancakes and sit with a bowl of thick maple syrup and pretend nothing is wrong with eating it as nature meant us to.

I am so excited about this news! I LOVE puffins. Since grade 3, when I made my first plasticine puffin I’ve been in love with them. You can keep your penguins, puffins are seriously cool birds – they swim AND fly so take that penguins. Plus the name is just plain fun to say – puffins, puffin, puffins….

So what has made this little cat so happy? Well… I was just looking at the flyer for Loblaws (grocery chain here in Canada) and they have a cereal I’ve never heard of on sale – PUFFINS!! Can you believe it? PUFFINS CEREAL…not only that, they have a campaign to help save puffins. Plus a smashing page with information about puffins right on their official website and neat puffin stuff to buy. Now how cool is that??? Check it out: Barbara Bakery

I am going to buy PUFFINS this week.

Yes… I am… totally depressed. My jam didn’t jam. We are canning fruit and veggies for winter along with some jam. Everything has been going along toodly fine. Well everything except my lovely peach jam. Sigh … guess I can use it as pie filling during the long cold months. It’s ever so depressing when you have your tastebuds all geared up for a nice piece of toast with home-made peach jam and you are looking at a pot of peach soup. I had a similar problem with the peach chutney I made last week, but was able to recover and make it thicker. The problem is the peaches are just so damned juicy this year. We are going to have another kick at the peach jam can this weekend. That is after we finish doing tomatoes.

Let’s cheer up with by catching up my sketches.

I mistakenly called the little ovenbird a cowbird in a previous post. Anyway, here is a repeat of the preliminary sketch and the completed drawing. The size difference is soley due to how I scanned it in. As you can see in the preliminary sketch, I focus on the eye first and work my way out. Once I’m happy with the eye, I create a basic outline and then begin to fill in from there.

From Catpaw’s Art work

From Catpaw’s Art work

It’s interesting to see the pictures side by side. As you can see, I’m beginning to get a bit frisky and I’m moving beyond drawing just the heads. I’ve begun to try and sketch in some of the chest and back along with a bit more detail in the feather patterns.

Wings still baffle me. I’m not sure how to tackle them as yet.

I’m using 2 mechanical pencils, one with B lead for the light shading and outline and then I move to 2B for the shading and patterns on the bird. I gently layer up the levels of darkness until I’m happy. The mechanical pencils are excellent because they maintain a good sharp point and allow me to do some very fine, fussy detail on the feathers. I’m also experimenting with various strokes and pressure on the pencil to get the feathered look. I also have a good kneadable eraser which is excellent for dabbing along areas where the feathers should be lighter, or the eye. Just a few light touches create a nice effect.

Here’s the bluejay I was working on:

From Catpaw’s Art work

From Catpaw’ Art work

Yea…I got a chuckle out of the beak too. It’s not quite right and I’ll bet you are asking yourself “what’s wrong with it?” It took me about 1/2 an hour to put my finger on what it is. The jay looks like he’s pursing his lips (er…beak?). It’s angled down just a hair too much which gives him a slightly annal appearance. If I had angled it up just a bit the forehead wouldn’t look so slicked back and the beak would be better proportioned. Oh well….

I’m gearing up to tackle the wings by the end of the week. I’m still waiting for the book on how to draw birds to come in. I’m hoping it will help me with the wings, feet and get the patterns on the feathers down a little better. But I’m going to keep plugging along with my little flock.

Wow did we get a storm yesterday!!

Looks like a couple of funnel clouds touched down outside of Toronto and the high winds here in the Toronto area did tremendous amount of damage. About 22,000 people in the area are without hydro and hundreds have been evacuated because of damage done to natural gas lines. 88,000 across Ontario are dealing with no power. The BBC has an excellent clip on the storm BBC coverage on Ontario storm

Funny, when I came out of the library yesterday I looked at the sky and said “somebody’s going to get a tornado!” I remember how the sky looked back in 1985 when a tornado tore through Barrie, Ontario. I was working in a 7-11 store in Burlington then (a weird chapter in my life. I’ll tell you about it one day). I will always remember how terribly, terribly dark it became. And as dark as we were in Burlington (@136km south of Barrie) on that May, it was completely black to the north were the Tornado came down. The skies rarely get that black and yesterday was almost as bad. The sudden drop in temperature told me all I needed to know. That was the other thing I remember from that day – how quickly the weather shifted from muggy to cool. In minutes the humidity vanished and the temperature dropped. That is never good.

There is a lot of clean up needed today. A couple of trees in the park near me are severly damaged – one looks like it may have taken a direct hit by lightening. The others lost a lot of large branches. But we were lucky – very little damage done in the area.

Earlier in the day, I wandered down to my neighbourhood Starbucks where I do most of my sketching lately. I like the staff there – they make me laugh and are masters at making my latte nice and foamy. I tend to sulk if I don’t get the correct amount of foam and the staff there make a wonderful production out of getting it just right for me. We are going to have a “Foam Off” – where the staff are going to compete in a contest to see who can create the most exquisite foam. I haven’t decided upon the award yet, but I’ll post the photos and let the public vote on them. I’ll let you know when the contest starts. But I digress… as usual…

I did a few more bird heads. I’m gearing up to doing the entire body. It could get messy…

First the complete sketches:

From Catpaw’s Art work

I’ve begun putting the name of the bird underneath because I want to know what it was I drew. My bird identification is shaky at the best of times. The blue jay came out rather nicely although I could have smoothed out the feathers beneath his eyes a bit more. As it is, he looks a bit tired and cranky. I had to work on his neck and chin area a lot. He kept looking like he had a terrible goiter. If you click on it, you can see I still had difficulties just under the beak. I think I should have shaded the area a bit more to show some more depth. The gnat catcher is okay. Another difficulty I tend to have is crowding the eye to the beak. The eye should be edged to the left a couple of millimetres. He is also a bit too buff in the chest area. He looks like he’s the Arnold Schwarzenegger of the song bird world. I couldn’t seem to get the perspective right, I think. If I had shaded the chest to show more depth, he wouldn’t be suffering from a terminal case of birdie steroids. A very light hand in shading the area would likely bring out more on both birds and give them that depth they are missing. The beaks are a lot better than that on my poor little tittmouse from yesterday’s post. Next big project is to start shading in the feather markings more acuratly.

Now… this is what I’m working on today (or tomorrow)

A nice cowbird

From Catpaw’s Art work

and another bluejay

From Catpaw’s Art work

These two show you how I start the sketch. I begin at the eye and then draw a rough outline around it so I can get the perspective correct. Well that and to make sure I don’t draw myself off the edge of the page, which I did a lot in my very early attempts last month. Oh give thanks to Errato for the shredder!!

I will likely work on the birds today. I’ll post them when I’m done with them.

Dear Burger King,

I’ve written before about your ill advised advertisements and the lack of judgement shown by both those  who create your ad campaigns and by those who approve them.  Your company shows an appalling insensitivity and astounding lack of common sense. Your latest ad, showing a Hindu Goddess floating atop a hamburger simply re-inforces my opinion that there is serious rot at the top of the food chain within your company.

Now I’m not Hindu – matter of fact I’m an unrepentant agnostic with touches of atheism at the fringes – but even I found your last ad, from Spain, breath-taking in it’s stupidity. Do you wonder why your market share has dropped? As a global chain, you should be aware of how your ads will play. Granted, the Hindu population is not your target market, but that does not allow you to be offensive, insensitive and down right idiotic in your behaviour. To paraphrase a line I used in a previous, unrelated post “Is it too much to ask for a modicum of common sense?”

By hijacking a symbol from another culture and faith, Lakshmi, the Indian goddess of wealth, and slapping her over top your Texas Whopper, you display the worst elements of  Insensitive Westerner. You further aggravated the problem by later offering up this  lame-ass apology “We are apologising because it wasn’t our intent to offend anyone. Burger King Corporation values and respects all of its guests as well as the communities we serve. This in-store advertisement was running to support only local promotion for three restaurants in Spain and was not intended to offend anyone.” It is obvious, even to the casual observer that Burger King has nothing but contempt for the public at large or it wouldn’t keep dishing out it’s noxious, “cutting edge” ads. It wasn’t your intent to offend anyone? You value and respect all of its guests? Wow, did it not occur to anyone that the misuse of a sacred symbol from a culture that DOES NOT ALLOW THE CONSUMPTION OF BEEF to flog coronary busting burgers might, just might, offend someone?

This apology doesn’t cut it. It’s simply a case of “If we get caught, then we’ll simper and apologise”. Let’s see, this year, sex charged and degrading ads aimed at children, insulting Mexico to sell the whopper and now this? All in less than a year? How many times do you have to apologise for these blunders before you realise your ads are not edgy, they are just stupid and offensive. I for one am sick and tired of your sad, bad and pathetic ads.

catpaw

Boycott Burger King until they grow up.

Is it possible to overdose on fresh strawberries? Not the plastic imported garbage the grocery stores insist upon feeding us. I’m talking about FRESH LOCAL strawberries. We’ve eaten so many, I keep checking the mirror to see if I’ve turned a lovely shade of strawberry red. Last Wednesday we went down to the farmers market and bought strawberries, peas, spinach and some lovely lettuce. Good eating. Alas, we finished all the berries and the peas and not much of the spinach is left. The farmers market is only open on Wednesday so I have a few days to wait.

Our grocery stores are a disgrace. You have to hunt for local produce. How can the farmers make a profit when the stores won’t sell their produce. Lots of California strawberries, but not a single Ontario basket. Disgraceful. I won’t touch the California factory farmed food. I’ll do without.

Is it Wednesday yet?