Kat Johnston

Tag: owl

  • Sketch: Time for another owl.

    Kat Johnston: Little Chester is an excited little owl!

    Surprisingly enough, ‘sketches for owls’ is one of the most popular search-terms people use to lead them to this site. Considering that I have not done a sketch of an owl in quite a while for here, something a little more current in the owl category certainly could not go astray, right?

    Thus, I bring you Chester. Chester is an owl. He is also very excited.

    I’m honestly not all that sure about what it is that Chester appears so excited about, but I am sure it is something good!

    Oh wait… I think I know what it is after all… you see, I’ve decided that after having the site as it is for a year, it is time that I started giving it the attention it deserves and do a redesign of it. So, uh, yeah… keep tuned! Sorry this is just a short post today, but I have to get to work. Phew.

  • 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!

  • Sketch: A little framed owl.

    Kat Johnston – switching obsessions for a day – we’re going for an owl. A cute owl!

    Another day, another sketch, another long-winded post to go along with it. Yay!

    Today I tossed on some music and did some sketching… today its an owl. I will most certainly have to draw some more bunnies later today, but I was in an owl mood earlier, so an owl it is.

    Yesterday was a good day… a very good day, really, when all is said and done. I got a call in the morning to ask me in for an interview, so you’ll have to keep your fingers crossed for me when the day comes. I have an interview next Wednesday, and needless to say, I’m hoping that I don’t just freeze up and totally botch it.

    Anyhow, back to yesterday – got the call for the interview and did my little bouncy happy dance, then had to drag the sister into the city. Got her stuff sorted out then had to go through the pain of shopping. Good thing about Second Life: (almost) never having to try something on before buying it. Everything generally looks ok, so long as the vendor hasn’t gone completely bonkers with their advertising. Real life is so not as kind. I went to a dozen stores before finding what I wanted, dragging my poor hapless sister around as an odd form of torture in revenge for her needing me to go out in the midday heat to begin with. Yay for revenge torture of sisters!

    Don’t worry… no small fluffy animals were hurt in the making of this post, nor in the process of the shopping trip yesterday unless you include the cow and chicken that were needlessly slaughtered to provision us with out lunch of yaki soba and sushi. My name is Kat. I love the meat.

  • Sketch: Scruff.

    Kat Johnston Sketch: Scruff the owl. He’s cute, he’s scruffy… he’s Scruff!

    This, my dears, is Scruff. Although an unassuming little owl, he does have a rather interesting way about him. He’s enthusiastic – its what sets him apart from all the other owls – nay, all the other creatures. He’s not the best, he’s not the brightest, there’s certainly smarter, fitter, and more beautiful creatures out there, but none may match him with the pure passion with which he approaches things. Everything he does, he does with a raw enthusiasm most have seemingly been weaned off of.

    Can you ever watch a child, with their eyes shining bright, their hands simply covered in every colour imaginable with the sheet in front of them smeared with the most ungodly mess of paint, and not smile? For sure, what they have produced is generally fairly lacking on the artistic front, and things are undoubtedly going to be a pain when it comes to the ‘cleaning up after’ stage, but the look on their little faces when they hold up their hands so proudly, saying ‘look what I’ve done!’ – well… its something I don’t see so much in adults. This pure, enthusiastic joy of creating for the sake of creating, or doing something just for the process of doing something, rather than necessarily the end result… I like it.

    My hubby can tell you that every so often he will come home to find me engrossed in something or other – it doesn’t really matter what – only to see me giggling with insane glee at discovering something… or perhaps figuring out ‘ahh, so I can do things this way’, or getting a stroke of a pen just right to the point where I just know that I cannot touch it even once more, because what I have already created is simply perfect. Its rather incredible just how much fun one can have when you’re just doing something simply because you enjoy it, not because you have to do it, but because you just really really want to.

    Oh… and I still paint with my fingers. There really is just no better way sometimes.

  • Please excuse the mess as we remodel.

    Kat Johnston Sketch – look! Its a little bitty owl. Isn’t he ohhhh so cute? I think I need to do some more owls…

    I actually meant to draw this little picture earlier today, but it was not until James inadvertently reminded me by doing something absolutely unrelated to either owls or baths that I remembered that I had to. You see, last night I was taking a nice relaxing bath, sans bubbles, and dozing away. Entirely focused on nothing in particular, my head lolled to the side and a little owl popped out at me from the tiling.

    His eyes went wide, quite startled at being found within the unevenly glazed surface of ceramics stretching along the wall. ‘Oh, oh my!’ said he, fluffing his feathered wings, ‘I certainly didn’t mean to disturb you.’

    ‘Oh, no bother,’ said I, ‘Please, sit a while and talk with me?’

    So he did, and it was rather an interesting conversation, when all is said and done. There is a lot that a little owl within a tile knows, for although he exists only by a trick of the light and stray smattering of a darker shade upon light, he actually seems rather well versed in the ways of the world. That said, he is an owl. They’re meant to be smart!

    Sanu Stuff: a close-up of a work in progress… a locket with a difference.

    Ok, talk of bathroom banter with imaginary owls aside, onto a little bit about Sanu today. The picture above is a capture I took today of a little something I’m working on – a cameo set featuring a bunny I recently put together for the project. Although in this image it seems of a relatively decent size, it is as tiny as can be – I do so love to torture those teensie tiny prims, I do!

    Its a lot of work, but I have to say… the results are just as I wished them, at least at this point. Elegant, refined, ridiculously over-detailed with teensie tiny pieces and a touch of humor to boot. Well… that’s Sanu for you!