J is for Junebug

These big bastards never fail to wig me out every summer. Apologies for the kinda-lousiness of this drawing, but I had to get back in the game!

G is for Golden Retriever

...in this case, my own Golden Retriever, my sweet boy Puck. True, he's not a purebred, but that's what he most closely resembles, so that's what I've always called him. Puckie turned 12 back in March, which I can scarcely believe. He's definitely lost a step or two...the poor guy has to wear special grippy "kitten mittons" on his back feet so that he doesn't slide all over our tile and hardwood floors thanks to degenerating nerves in his rear end. Man, getting old sucks.

Still, he's mentally the same old Puck, and loves to bark at cats and get his mane scratched. And he still does "The Fang", which is my name for the snaggly front tooth that shows when he curls up his front lip during an especially productive scratch.

He'll always be my first baby...I love him soooo much!

F is for Fox

I sketched this yesterday (and inked it this morning) based on a stuffed fox in a diorama at the nature center of Richmond's Three Lakes Park, where we had our annual Mother's Day picnic. It was the last one as a family of three, as we're all set to welcome our second kid into the world this Wednesday, via the miracle of C-section. We're not 100% sure on the name yet, though Evie, my three-year-old, wants to call him "Schwally". Unfortunately for him, that'll probably be his nickname whether he likes it or not!

E is for Elephant

I had a little pencil sketch of an eagle all done up, but I was afraid it'd seem too much like a statement today of all days. Went with this quick, silly illo of an elephant instead...always fun to draw these chubby bastards!

D is for Dik-Dik

"A dik-dik, pronounced "dĭk’ dĭk", is a small antelope that lives in the bushes of East Africa, Angola and Namibia. Dik-diks stand 30–40 cm (approx. 12–16 inches) at the shoulder, are 50–70 cm (approx. 20-28 inches) long, weigh 3–6 kg (approx. 7-16 pounds) and can live for up to 10 years. Dik-diks are named for the alarm calls of the females, which make a dik-dik, or zik-zik sound."

Seriously, these things look like they were designed by a manga artist to be adorable. It's ridiculous.

EDIT: And speaking of adorable...I've been printing out all my Animal Alphabet drawings for my daughter Evie to color...here's what she came up with for this one!

C is for Cheetah

"The cheetah achieves by far the fastest land speed of any living animal — between 112 and 120 km/h (70 and 75 mph) in short bursts covering distances up to 500 m (1,600 ft), and has the ability to accelerate from 0 to over 100 km/h (62 mph) in three seconds."

B is for Boa Constrictor

It's Animal Alphabet time! I managed to squeeze some extra details in this week (see what I did there?).

"Boa constrictors are ambush predators and as such will often lie in wait for an appropriate prey to come along at which point they will attack. However, they have also been known to actively hunt, particularly in regions with a low concentration of suitable prey, and this behaviour generally occurs at night. The boa will first strike at the prey, grabbing it with its teeth, it then proceeds to constrict the prey until death before consuming it whole."

A is for Aardvark

I'm working on a new weekly project, suggested by my pal Ben Towle...The Animal Alphabet! We'll post each Monday on our respective blogs and on the Twitters as well (#AnimalAlphabet)...hopefully some other folks will choose to play along as well! As far as I know, the deal is that we won't announce what we've chosen to draw ahead of time...I'm looking forward to seeing if we have some weeks where we both pick the same animal (it almost happened this week in fact...Alpaca was my second choice!)

Anyway, I'm doing this for two reasons...one, I'm historically pretty lousy at drawing animals...this'll be good practice, and I might actually learn something! And two...boy, it's nice to draw something I can share with my daughter. I showed her this drawing this morning, and she got very excited..."He looks like a piggy!" I said, "Yeah, he digs in the ground with his nose and eats ants!", which elicited a big "ANTS? EWWWW!" It was pretty great.

Enjoy!