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about drawing

Mammals of Iraq: Golden Jackal (Canis aureus)

by JR Kinyak on August 4, 2008

in Carnivores,Theme Weeks

click image to enlarge

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Golden jackals live not only in Iraq, but throughout northern Africa, Asia, and up into southern Europe. They mate for life, living in tight little family packs. They have one litter a year, and each time, a couple of their offspring stay on with their parents to help raise the next litter. These big brothers and sisters are called “helpers” and are vitally important to a jackal family’s survival, offering assistance in guarding, hunting, and regurgitating food for the little ones. Speaking of food, golden jackals like to eat eggs, birds, other small animals, baby gazelles, and fruit. They also enjoy taking lions’ leftovers, and they’ll bury their scavenged food if another animal happens upon the feast. The golden jackal is the last animal we’ll meet in this Mammals of Iraq series.

Incidentally, I want my husband Ted to start writing an advice column called “Help! My Jackal Looks Like a Cat!” He says there’s no market for it, but I think the demand’s there. What’s your opinion?

Consecutive days of mammals: 3
Record: 16

Tagged as: about drawing, dog

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Mammals of Iraq: Caucasian Squirrel (Sciurus anomalus)

by JR Kinyak on July 20, 2008

in Rodents,Theme Weeks

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Sigh. It was so long ago that I started the Mammals of Iraq series. Then I decided to draw a jerboa…and it was really difficult…and I started putting it off…and forever passed. I decided to skip that particular jerboa species for now and just get on with it already. This squirrel, also known as the Persian squirrel, was the result. I wish his two eyes didn’t look like they belonged to two different squirrels, but oh well. One thing I really need to work on with the Daily Mammal is perfectionism. I don’t mean in the sense that I do everything perfectly, but almost the opposite: I do nothing perfectly, and I beat myself up about it, and I give up, and I spend way too much time. When your goal is to draw all 5,000 mammal species, though, perfect is the enemy of the good, as someone says. (Voltaire, actually. One interesting thing is that business writers have flipped that around to “the good is the enemy of the great,” which is the opposite meaning.)

Anyway, here are three interesting Caucasian-squirrel-related links.

“Almost 300 languages and their word for squirrel”: According to this site, there are two Kurdish words for the Persian squirrel, sihoreek and simolak.

Listen to a Persian squirrel’s chirps. When I first played this recording on my computer just now, my dog Minnie ran over to cock her head back and forth at the speakers. But she either figured it out or lost interest pretty quickly, and now she ignores it.

“My friend Fındık,” a delightful Flickr set of photographs of a pet Caucasian squirrel who lives in Turkey. Check out Fındık’s relaxed poses: you never see squirrels lounging about like that in the wild.

Edit: I shouldn’t have said you “never” see squirrels lounging about like that in the wild. I just found a new Flickr group called Squirrel Pancakes, full of photos of secure squirrels in parks and backyards.

Consecutive days of mammals: 1
Record: 16

Tagged as: about drawing, Add new tag, squirrel

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Happy birthday, Daily Mammal!

by JR Kinyak on June 4, 2008

in Operations

Today, June 3, is the Daily Mammal’s first birthday! A few weeks ago, I posted a couple of goals I wanted to meet by today. And guess what! I met them! You wouldn’t know, though, because I have six drawings of mammals in six orders that have never previously been seen on this site, but I haven’t scanned and posted them yet. I hope I can start posting them this week.

So to recap, in the first year of the Daily Mammal, while I did not draw 366 mammals as would have been ideal, I did draw half a year’s worth, coming in at about 185 species (plus a few repeated species due to mammalthon requests). And I managed to draw at least one species in every order of mammal, and since there are a few orders that contain only one species, they’re officially retired—cross ‘em off the list!

Speaking of lists, I’m going to start periodically making available an updated spreadsheet of all the mammal species that shows which I’ve already drawn. You can download the spreadsheet, which is in Excel format, by clicking here.

Thanks for supporting the Daily Mammal for the past year, and let’s have another great year starting now! Only thirteen years to go…

Tagged as: about drawing

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Mammalthon 2: Guereza (Colobus guereza)

by JR Kinyak on May 14, 2008

in Mammalthons,Primates

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Last one! That was sure a looooong 24 hours, wasn’t it? My tía Laura let me pick for her, and I selected this black-and-white colobus monkey species, the guereza. It lives in Africa, and the white feathery fur you see off its shoulder here is called its mantle. It also has a very long tail, not shown here. This guy reminds me of a certain famous painting, and painter. Check it out:

Consecutive days of mammals: 12
Previous record: 11

Tagged as: about drawing, monkey

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Assorted mammalian musings

by JR Kinyak on May 8, 2008

in Operations

• On June 3, 2007, the first Daily Mammal post went up. Almost a year ago!

• I was up until 3:30 am last night working on a spreadsheet that lists the Latin names and taxonomic situations of all the mammals of the world. (Don’t worry, I didn’t make that part, I downloaded it from the Smithsonian.) What I was doing was putting in the common names and the dates posted for the mammals I’ve drawn. I got them all in except for this latest mammalthon batch, and while I do feel a sense of satisfaction for having done that, I am very disappointed that I have drawn nowhere near the 366 mammals I should have. Luckily, my 14-year estimate was based on a rounding up of 13 and a half years, so I don’t need to change that prediction yet. But I have to get on the ball!

• My first goal for the few weeks left in this first fiscal mammal year is to hit half of the 366 mammals that we needed.

• My second goal is to draw at least one species from every order of mammals by June 3. Orders are the groups like rodents, primates, ungulates, carnivores, etc. There are 10 orders we haven’t covered, so unless one of them is extremely mysterious and no reference images can be found, that should be no problem. One of the remaining orders is represented by just one species!

• My goal for next year is to draw 365 mammals between June 3, 2008, and June 3, 2009. I think that hard as it is, it’s still worthwhile to try to draw one a day. I know there will be times—business trips, for instance—when it’s just not possible, but I can do mammalthons to make up for those times, maybe. Here is a quote from Andy Warhol (via Gretchen Rubin’s Happiness Project, one of my favorite blogs) that addresses this:

“Actually, I jade very quickly. Once is usually enough. Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it’s exciting, and if you do it every day it’s exciting. But if you do it, say, twice or just almost every day, it’s not good any more.”

• In creating this spreadsheet, I got to go back and look at all my old drawings. My drawing has improved so much in just a year! (Imagine how good I’d get if I actually did draw every day.) I think right now I’ve plateaued, but maybe I’ll start an upward swing again soon. Here’s something funny I noticed. I’ve drawn three different kangaroo rats over the past year, and each time I didn’t think about the other ones I’d drawn. But look at the drawings. Every one is in the same position! And what’s up with the style of that second one (from Mammalthon 1)? Here they are; which is your favorite?:




Tagged as: about drawing, taxonomy

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CONTEST! Five Deer Mice: Aztec Mouse, California Mouse, Canyon Mouse, Gleaning Mouse, Hooper’s Deer Mouse

by JR Kinyak on April 7, 2008

in Rodents

April 19: Daily Mammal 24-Hour Mammal Marathon 2! Details later this week.

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Those of you who have been following the Daily Mammal from the start know how daunting the rodents are. Nearly half of the 5,000 named mammal species are rodents, and as Ivan T. Sanderson says in Living Mammals of the World, “whole slews of these look almost exactly alike.” Not only are there are thousands and thousands of them, something I had not considered when I decided to begin this project, but there aren’t very good photos of a great many of them. A while back, I drew a set of five sleeping dormice, and found it heartening to check several rodents off the list at once. Here’s another of those multi-mouse drawings. This time we’re tackling five deer mice (major hantavirus carriers), of the Peromyscus genus.

I didn’t have photographs of a single one of these mice. Instead, I had photographs of Peromyscus species that are much more common in the US, and I had very detailed descriptions of these five species from the species accounts in Mammalian Species, which I download in PDF from Virginia Hayssen’s website. Now, let me tell you, I do not as yet speak the language of zoology, but I’m going to learn it. There are standard names for describing animals’ fur, or pelage, as we mammalogists call it: ochre, buffy, tawny, and a wash of brown may all mean tan to you and me, but not to those whose eyes are trained to discern the nuances. Would my biologist readers let me know where I can get a chart or something that shows what those colors really are? I read that Munsell Soil Color Charts are used for describing pelage—is that where these names come from? I’d like to know.

Anyway, in drawing these mice, I had only the scientific descriptions to go on, and only my experience with acrylic paints to help me decipher the meaning of the colors. (Well, that and the fact that I’ve known three cocker spaniels named Buffy.) Here’s where you come in.

CONTEST: I’m going to type, below, some hints from the descriptions of these mice. The first person to identify in a comment to this post which of the five is which wins this drawing, matted and ready for framing. Ted is not eligible. Here we go.

Aztec mouse (P. aztecus):

  • Dorsal coloration is pale ochre mixed with black
  • Sides are reddish
  • Underparts are light buff
  • A black orbital ring is present
  • Size is medium

California mouse (P. californicus):

  • Annulations are not thoroughly concealed
  • Color is generally blackish brown above, sides ochraceous-tawny, venter pale olive gray to buffy brown
  • Largest species of the genus in the United States

Canyon mouse (P. crinitus)

  • Feet white
  • Dorsal pelage silky
  • Dorsal individual hairs lead-gray at base, succeeded by ochraceous to buffy subterminal band, and tipped with brown or back; dark grayish bases of hairs sometimes visible through buffy to pale grayish shade of dorsum
  • Hairs of forehead, nose, and face appearing slightly more grayish than body
  • Venter white
  • Size small to medium for genus

Gleaning mouse (P. spicilegus)

  • Unworn pelage has upperparts rich, tawny approaching ocherous rufous, dusky and dusky-tipped hairs uniformly distributed throughout upperparts
  • Black or nearly black orbital ring extends posteriorly into a grizzled area between the eye and the base of the ear
  • White feet
  • Tail blackish-brown above, white below with coarse annulations
  • Medium in size for the genus

Hooper’s deer mouse (P. hooperi)

  • Upper parts grayish with faint to moderate wash of brown
  • Underparts pale cream
  • Hind feet and lower legs whitish
  • Medium size for genus

Good luck!

Tagged as: about drawing, ivan, mouse, multiples, words

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Extra mammal: Golden Lion Tamarin (Leontopithecus rosalia)

by JR Kinyak on February 10, 2008

in Primates

Don’t forget to download your free Daily Mammal valentines!

During the 24-Hour Mammalthon in December, or rather after it when I was catching up on my orders, I drew a golden lion tamarin for a boy named Tynan. Rebecca saw that drawing and loved it, and once I opened the Daily Mammal Original Art Shop, Rebecca requested a golden lion tamarin of her own! (You can request a mammal of your own, too.)
Since Rebecca really liked the original golden lion tamarin I did, I wanted the new one to be fairly similar to it, but I also didn’t want to just copy it outright, thinking that would make it stiff, without the life and energy I want my drawings to have. So I started from the beginning, gathering images and doing sketches and everything like I would with a brand-new mammal, but keeping in mind what I remembered about the other drawing.


They turned out to be somewhat alike, but not entirely. One thing that’s sort of amazed me during this nascent 14-year-long project is how much my drawing has evolved since I started last summer. Drawing every single day (almost) really has an incredible effect that I couldn’t have predicted. Without my consciously changing anything, my drawing style has changed, and you can see it in this new tamarin.

So although it’s not exactly the same, I hope you like this golden lion tamarin as much as you did the other one, Rebecca!

Tagged as: about drawing, endangered, monkey

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