Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Finals! Blegh.

Check this out! This was my final project for my intro to drawing class. It's colored pencil on dah-dah-dah! paper! I'm fairly pleased with it. It's so nice to be finally finished with finals for the year. I hate finals week. Somehow they manage to pack an entire year's worth of stress into three days. My adrenaline gland is still going nuts! But it's finally over! I'm going to go do absolutely nothing for the next three days before life throws me another curve ball.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Nick is a panda!


Alright, so you know that game that everyone plays at some point in their lives where you ask each other stupid questions with no real relation to life as me know it? Don't lie, we've all played it. Just some of us play it more often than others.
I play it more often than I care to admit. What can I say? I'm easily entertained. One of the most common questions asked is the old standby, If you were an animal, what would you be?
Most people either know their answer immediately, or hem and haw and refuse to say and expect you to pick something for them. I usually pick naked mole-rat for them. Just out of spite. But this one was for a friend. We took a few randomized polls and the results came back that he was a panda bear. I whipped out a little doodle in my sketchbook about it, then forgot all about the whole thing until he started pestering me about two weeks ago about, and I quote, "the old bear." So I sketched something, scanned and colored it, and here it is.
Now for some panda facts:
  1. Scientists originally thought that the Giant Panda belonged to the family Procyonidae, which is Latin for "Animals who wear masks and dig through garbage cans." Then, because of its overwhelming resemblance to a bear, the scientists decided that it might be more like said bear than a raccoon.
  2. The main reason that the scientists were confused is that the panda is obviously shunned by other bears because of certain embarrassing lifestyle choices. I mean, what self respecting bear would be caught dead munching on bamboo? Healthy - maybe, socially acceptable - not for bears.
  3. Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was the first non-Chinese person (wow, that was a masterful use of the English language) to shoot a panda. I imagine he also enjoyed clubbing baby seals.
  4. They, like human children are required to watch those nasty health videos about "Reproduction." No really. They do. In zoos and stuff. It was on wikipedia, it must be true right?
Whew! I haven't done that much research at one time in, like, three hours! I'm exhausted! Peace. Out.