Day 15: Anniversary

"Love knows not what time is."

This week's theme is free time...and I guess my drawing for today is more about just the second half of that phrase. I drew this picture for my grandparents' 50th anniversary, which we celebrated today. I was not going to use it as today's drawing, but seeing as I do not actually have any free time, as much as I wish I did, I am using this as my drawing for today. This drawing is based off of photos of my grandparents from high school. They got married and are still married 50 years later, so I figured the occasion could fall under the theme of time (maybe not free time, but...it'll have to do).

Also, the picture of the drawing is once again terrible quality because I once again used a photo of it I took with my phone and not a scan of it. Sorry.

Day 14: Spider Monkey

Spider Monkey

I don't have a scanner with me at the moment, so the quality is terrible (not to mention the fact that the quality of the drawing was terrible to begin with since I spent minimal time on it) but here it is. It's a spider money...and that's really all I have to say about this one.

Day 13: Ladybug (Happy Thanksgiving!)

This drawing is by my younger brother, Scott.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

"If the only prayer you said in your whole life was 'thank you', that would suffice."

-Meister Eckhart

And now, for my drawing of the day:

Once again, Happy Thanksgiving! Eat lots of pie!

Day 12: Happy Giraffe

"It's an incredibly difficult thing to bring a giraffe down. They can kill a lion with a single blow from their feet."

-Joanna Lumley

Today, my younger sister complimented me on the "giraffes" I drew yesterday. Apparently I didn't do such a great job drawing those elephants. Hopefully her compliment was more a reflection on her inability to recall the correct noun than my inability to draw en elephant. 

Anyways, giraffes are actually pretty amazing animals. Here are some fun facts about them:

• The giraffes neck contains only 7 vertebrae, despite it's amazing length. Anchor muscles on its shoulders help to hold it up. 
• Males undergo "necking" contests to compete for mates.
• Giraffes can run up to 34 miles per hour. However, due to the high blood pressure required to pump blood up to their heads through their long necks, they cannot sustain this pace.
• A giraffe's kick can decapitate a lion!
• The hooves of a fully grown giraffe are about the size of a dinner plate.
• A giraffe's tail, at 8 feet long, is one of the longest in the world. 
• Giraffes also have extremely long tongues (of a purple-black color) at 18 inches in length.
• Giraffes love to eat acacia, a thorny tree. Thus, their saliva is antiseptic in order to help their thorn-wounded tongues heal correctly.
• Female giraffes remain standing while giving birth, and the baby drops to the ground. Despite the long drop, the calf is up and running a few hours later.
• A giraffe consumes about 140 pounds of foliage per day.

(All of those facts are from http://www.kenya-travel-packages.com/interesting-facts-about-giraffes.html)

Day 11: Elephants

"I meant what I said and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful one hundred percent."

-Horton the Elephant (Dr. Seuss' Horton Hatches the Egg)

This is a drawing of a photograph I found on nationalgeographic.com. Who doesn't love elephants?

Day 10: Mother Nature (Take 2)

"People in cities may forget the soil for as long as a hundred years, but Mother Nature's memory is long and she will not let them forget indefinitely."

-Henry Cantwell Wallace

Start over! I was not at all happy with my sketch yesterday, so I decided to do the same thing again today, but this time do it right. This time I used a photo of myself for the face because I really just cannot sketch without looking directly at something at this point. I'm much happier with this sketch...besides the fact that I used my own face for Mother Nature, which seems really egotistical but it's just easiest to take a picture of myself than to search for another model to use. 

Unfortunately, I accidentally dropped my sketching pencil down two stories of a building and when I went down to the floor it fell to I couldn't locate it...maybe it bounced on the eraser end and went flying? I dont know. I'm just glad that nobody was standing beneath it! But moral of the story: I'm going to have to find another pencil to use sometime soon.

Day 9: Mother Nature

"If you can't be in awe of Mother Nature, there's something wrong with you."

All I have to say about this is that it's terrible and I wish I had any time to actually draw something halfway decent. The sight of it actually makes me cringe. Oh well...there just aren't enough hours in the day to do everything we want to do.