Eastern Screech Owl (Megascops asio), Daniel D. Brown, 2012, Pencil

This is a drawing of an Eastern Screech Owl (Megascops asio) of the “rufous morph” variety. The photo on which it is based was taken by a very nice man named Andy M¢ on Flickr who kindly gave me permission to use it in this artwork (here is the original photo).

Thanks to advice from the talented artist Glendon Mellow, I switched to using mechanical pencil for this drawing instead of traditional wood-encased lead pencils. The level of detail I can get is significantly better with the more-or-less constant diameter mechanical drafting pencil, and will be even greater once I buy a smaller diameter (I used 0.5mm for this one, but kept wishing I had a smaller one).

Side note: in high school, my zoology teacher Mr. Bob Ross once took our class out to the woods around Beaver Lake in Arkansas. There he taught us to actually call screech owls (as well as barred owls). I can’t call the screech owl very well any more, but I can still do a good barred owl. Mr. Ross was also one of my primary inspirations to eventually get my Ph.D. in biology.  


Eastern Screech Owl, Daniel D. Brown, 2012, pencil - Framed

 

Octopus vs. Velociraptor – T-Shirts!

Do you like Octopuses? How about Dinosaurs?
Then check out this new T-shirt I designed. That’s right – it’s an Octopus eating a Velociraptor in a tree.
(note: this is a compressed jpeg version – the original and t-shirts are much higher quality).

Buy this T-shirt at the
Laughing Mantis Zazzle store.

Octopus vs. Velociraptor – Detail

You can get it in black or white (or multiple other colors I believe).

Octopus vs. Velociraptor – Black T-shirt

It’s basically a re-rendering of my detailed digital artwork “Octopus arborealus”

Ocean Invasion #1: Octopus arborealus