Kat Johnston

Tag: animal

  • Painting: A little further along.

    Kat Johnston Painting: She's getting mighty pretty now, ain't she? She's still in progress though...

    So my dear giraffe is a little further along, and I think she’s coming on nicely.

    Needless to say though, the fear is starting to set in. You see, every time I do a painting, it is pretty much the same. I love the underpainting, then hate several of the in-between stages when things look as if they’ve been poorly cut and pasted together like a three year old with a magazine and a pair of dull safety scissors. Then it starts coming together again, and I like what I see. I go, ‘Ohh, this is starting to look good!’ and I can finally start seeing what I’ve been trying to achieve. That is an awesome time. A brilliant time. A whimsical, magical, fantastical time.

    Until I have to pick up the paintbrush again.

    Until I stop procrastinating and stop thinking, ‘Maybe I should just leave it there… it’s good enough, right?’

    Because that is when the real nerves kick in. And that is where I am at. Well… I’m actually already a little bit into that stage, but we’ll ignore that. Wish me luck, because the next time I post a picture of this darling lady, she will hopefully be done. Phew!

  • Sketch: It’s an Alpaca!

    Kat Johnston Sketch - Alpacas are cute... and cuddley... and somewhat skittish. You've gotta love an alpaca!

    Urgh! I’ve been trying to upload this picture for over a week, but my uploader was not working properly. Luckily, I’ve gotten it to work right again!

    My in-laws have alpacas. They’re sweet, they’re adorable, and they look so cute covered in fluffy fluffy wool. I’m even getting some of the fleece from the recent shearing to try my hand at felt-making. Won’t that be fun?

    I think alpacas are an under-appreciated animal, all in all. Ok, so it might just look like a small llama, but doesn’t that make it even more cute? After all, a toy dachshund is even cuter than a regular dachshund, a miniature pony has a greater ‘awww!’ value than a draft-horse, and for some reason, restaurants certainly have a way of making us pay greater amounts for tinier, over-presented servings of the same food.

    Of all the camelids, I like the alpaca best.

  • Sketch: If Pigs Had Wings.

    Kat Johnston Sketch: It's a cute little piggley-wink! And it has wings!

    Whenever you’ve taken a break from blogging, it really does feel as if you should apologize for being gone so long. I would, but I’ve been so sick and busy of late, that it was kinda unavoidable. I have had colds, flus, tonsillitis and lord only knows how many instances of ailments over the past few months. Not to mention a few little computer troubles… How annoying!

    It is time to get back into the swing of things, don’t you think?

    So here is today’s sketch. It’s a pig! It has wings! It is cute as can be, and was sketched along with a few other pigs on a folded over piece of paper.

    His name is Fauntleroy Montgomery the Third, and he loves peppers. He is also the only pig he knows that happens to have little wings sprouting from his back!

  • Sketch: Panda! It’s a panda!

    Kat Johnston Sketch: Look! It is a panda! I drew it specially for Andel Rhiadra of A.D.D Andel.

    So here is a quick panda I drew for a friend of mine, Andel Rhiadra! I asked her what I should draw today; I am not surprised that ‘panda’ was the answer. She is obsessed. I think if she could have a pet panda, it wouldn’t take long until she stole one from the zoo and set it up with some bamboo in the guest room, with much fawning and petting. I’m not even sure if a panda would let its kidnapper pet it… but… I’m sure she’d try!

    Today, alas, is more studio/house cleaning, along with much-needed work on my site. I know that nothing can be seen of it yet, but things are a’changin’! So far though, it has been upgrading and updating all the back-end stuff before getting to the fun things. No point in painting a house all pretty if it is going to fall down in the next gust of wind, right? Right.

    One of the things that I’ve updated which will have an immediate effect on those visiting the site is that I have installed a captcha device on comments. I know it is a pain, but my spam filters are getting hundreds of comments trapped in them per day… and it is just way too much effort to try and go through them all to sort out if any are legitimate comments. I know it is an extra half-step, but I hope it doesn’t bother you too much.

    If someone could post a legitimate comment to test it out, that would be awesome. If it continues to deter spam postings, perhaps I can turn off the need to manually approve comments altogether! Yay!

  • Sketch: What happens when an owl bites a zombie rat?

    Kat Johnston Sketch: What happens when a zombie rat is bitten by a non-zombie owl? Why, it turns into a zombie owl, of course!

    Want to understand where this has come from? Read yesterday’s post. I may or may not have been musing about the existence of zombie-rats as the result of scientific testing as a precursor to the regular zombie apocalypse, colloquially known as ‘Zompocalypse’.

    Let’s try to follow my logic for a sec: Rats turn into zombies because of weird and wacky mad scientists trying to create the next great bio-weapon and testing said bio-weapon on rats. Zombie-rats escape the lab (hey, if the Rats of Nymph can do it, super-smart zombie-rats can too) and bite everything in sight… thus turning humans (and other creatures) into zombies too.

    These zombie-rats aren’t the slow-moving, arms-outstretched, brain-dead zombies of yore… These zombie-rats are smart. They’re so darn smart, they understand the concept of sweet sweet revenge. And they’re willing to act on it.

    So, what enjoys swooping on rats, scooping them up, and supping on their still-warm innards after pecking them to death? Owls. It is only natural that these new super-smart zombie-rats would plot to overcome the vicious owls who have plagued them so long.  Zombie-rats swarm the not-zombie-owls, biting em all over, and thus making zombie-owls (perhaps even mind-controlled zombie-owl minions). The great chain of life (or death, as it were) is complete… or… something like that, anyway.

    Ok, I realize that it’s a little out there, but I really did want an excuse to draw a zombie owl. That, and I am incredibly surprised at the significant lack of zombie animals in these movies… the best I think I’ve seen is a few rabid dogs. I realize that human afflictions often don’t translate into the animal world and visa versa, but surely a few do, right? Zombie-ism should be one!

    Anyhow… that is all for today. Viva-la-zombies!