Crow Art!
I mean, who doesn’t love it, am I right? Shout out to the murder y’all - wassaaaaaaaaaaa!!!
Ok so on Saturday, it was a standard crow portrait. This was straight from the ol’ bean - no models were available err uh…used. No models were used, yeah. (Crows wouldn’t come around him and he’s being sensitive about it)
I basically whipped up a quick and dirty (but obviously quite handsome) crow sketch. I’ve been enjoying experimenting with forcing myself to move faster with the pen. Typically, I’ve always been a single, solid, clean line kinda guy - which winds up feeling cartoonish at best, but usually it comes out looking straight up juvenile. Anyway, once I had a crow kinda down, the paper looked too plain, so I did a squiggly sort of implied background thing where I just squiggled a little ways outward from all the surface edges of the original crow part with a blue marker. Then that didn’t feel like enough, so I blasted the whole background with a different shaded blue paint marker, true story.
Even more true? This one from Sunday is a 100% factual account of how Peanut Guy imagines things went down when the crows got tired of being left with dirty water:
I like to imagine how pleased he must’ve been, the sensation of pressing between the fence and the jar, finally to feel it budge, first a little and then all at once and then! SLOOSH!!! CLINK! Oh the absolute satisfaction of hearing that crappy old water pouring out, the high pitched yelp the glass mason jar stifled out when it hit the sandy soil! Cawing all the way proudly back to the murder - I DID IT!!! I DID IT!!! HAHAHAHA!!! guys - I ACTUALLY DID IT!!! 🤣🤣🤣
…that guy is a legend now, and I’m damn proud of ‘im!
THE MURDER!
Crow Lovers tag list (opt in or out any time in the comments!!!)
@corvidae @melinda010100 @allie.cat @lucy.goose
It's so good to see you art-ing, my friend <3 I'm frankly in awe and a lil jealous at the variety of expressions your crows got! Lovely.
Hahaha thanks! It’s been fun to see them sometimes actually do what I want them to. The one kicking the water jar absolutely amazed me - just scribbles, but I did feel it managed to capture that little element of over enthusiasm 🤣
…I’m excited to see how these skills might develop with regular use!
🎉 Upvoted 🎉
👏 Keep Up the good work on Hive ♦️ 👏
❤️ @palomap3 suggested sagarkothari88 to upvote your post ❤️
Lol, I know that feeling, the crows show a little trust and suddenly they remember you're a living creature and they "OMFG" and take off.
HAHAHA! Yeah pretty much none of them really seem to trust me yet at all. They even still try to fake me out when I throw them peanuts :) …they act like they’re not interested and are flying away, but they always just do a loop and come back from the opposite side 🤣
But they trust me enough to come back and check to see if I’m still tossin’ snacks, which feels like a big deal to me :)
I wonder what would happen if you dropped a peanut every few feet as you walked away to see how far you have to be before they come down, and if you turned sideways and tried not to watch directly if they would venture closer down the peanut trail..?
can't wait to see this as a comic
Hey! Sorry this took so long to respond to, I really had to dig for it this morning to even find it!
I was hoping to reply with a comic, but it seems I have not built the trust yet to make that happen. I had one that came down and nibbled away bits of the peanut trail, but wouldn’t come any closer than like half a football field 🤣
…however, the crows in another area have finally determined that when I throw stuff out onto the ground, it’s always food - so now I’m metamorphosing from Peanut Guy to Dog Food Dood! They love the stuff!
I just spent $40 on dog food this morning, and bought a high definition trail camera on Temu, so hopefully I’ll have some fun and relatable comics coming up soon. If the camera works out, I’m hoping to start identifying more individuals and sketching their portraits :)
Oooooo that's exciting!
I can't remember if I already asked, are crows hunted by people anywhere remotely near where you live? That might be why they are so nervous. Rumor has it that we don't have ravens in the city here because superstitious humans persecuted them way back in the day, although I don't know if that's true.
Or it could also be a species thing. I think our American Crows and Northwestern Crows are pretty adapted to sharing space with humans.
That's a really good point! I'm not sure if anyone specifically hunted or hunts them, but things I guess used to be pretty feral out here. My neighbor apparently shoots groundhogs and rabbits with a .22 rifle from his kitchen window...when I moved here, he told me he used to before the neighborhood grew, but kind of implied also that he still does when he thinks he can get away with it...and that's just one guy but it is my neighbor, which probably puts me on the suspicious list as well.
...Good for them honestly, I'd rather they stay smart and safe!
I hope he at least eats what he shoots... 'round here people only shoot people. Though I once saw a crow get shot in the city by what was probably a pellet gun wielded by some ignorant, unloved child.
These are all things you didn't need to know. And now back to our regularly scheduled crows. Aren't they rad?