Hi Everyone –
I had been hoping that my study of snakes this month would help me overcome my ophidiophobia. Alas, it has not. It has, in fact, made me realize JUST HOW CREEPY SNAKES REALLY ARE.
For example, snakes are carnivores. Carnivores are animals who eat meat. Now, I don’t have a problem with that—some people (myself included) eat meat. No no, that’s not the problem. The problem is that snakes eat meat by unhinging their jaw and swallowing their meat whole. It is the grossest.
If you find this sort of thing fascinating, please feel free to click play on the video below. If this is the stuff of nightmares (which it is for me) then I will give you a play-by-play description below. Hold onto your lunch:
AUUGHGGHGGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGHGGHGHGHHHHHHH!!!! If I were allowed to use swear words on this blog, you can be sure that this is where I would use them. For those of you who didn’t watch the video, basically it shows an African Egg Eating Snake taking an egg that is WAY bigger than its head, opening up its mouth, bigger, and BIGGER and BIGGER until that egg is unbelievably completely swallowed. After it closes its mouth, it’s basically got a giant egg-shaped lump in its throat.
Then (apparently) it takes these bony little bits that are attached to its spine (INSIDE HIS BODY) to crack the egg. Then it kind of hurks and squeezes all the insides of the egg out into its belly and SPITS THE EGGSHELL BACK OUT in a neat little squooshed barf.
AUGGGHGHGHGGHGGHGHGHGGHGHGGHGGHGHHH!!! So, so gross. I really, really admire those of you who can watch that and not have your skin just go all goosebumps and creepy crawly.
Now, for the record, it turns out that African Egg Eating Snakes are actually quite shy and nervous. They don’t eat anything other than eggs and are totally non-threatening to people. Only threatening to eggs. And yet – and YET! I’m pretty sure if I ever saw one out and about on my next trip to Africa, I would surely scream like a baby.
I like my snakes to eat their eggs neatly, in an egg cup, with a wooden spoon please.
If there’s anyone out there interested in drawing a snake, drawing an egg, drawing a snake eating an egg, or writing about my egg-eating snake, we’d love to hear it. Email it to us and we’ll post it on the blog, or post it on the Bobbledy Facebookpage. And remember, one contributor every month gets a free book! (ps Simon, yes, we owe you a couple books now) (pps kids other than Simon, step up! Get your free book! The odds are in your favor!)
So, for those of you in the Bobbledy Books club, the next thing you’ll be receiving in the mail is this year’s album of music by our good friend Drew. Drew has been sending us snippets and chunks and tantalizing tidbits of songs for the past four months, and we’re finally putting the whole thing together. Let me tell you: there are some real gems on this album.
But, believe it or not, we had no trouble coming up with the name of the album. It sort of screamed to us when we were looking through the playlist.
And so [drum roll!] the album is named “Where is My Chicken?” after its title song, “Where is My Chicken?”. It all makes sense.
Now, it hasn’t been released yet, so you can’t buy it yet. And part of why it hasn’t been released yet is because I still have to make the album art for it.
I kind of had in my head from the start a chicken rocking out on the guitar. I talked over my ideas with Matthew, who suggested we really ought to have a rooster playing the guitar. It would just make more sense. And so the sketching began.
I started with a strutting rooster, but decided that he looked better standing straight on with his legs spread, like one does when hitting a power chord:
Once I got his position figured out, I drew in the lines a little darker. And I added some more detail in his tail feathers:
Then I started coloring him in. I did this drawing entirely on my computer – I just bought a set of Photoshop paintbrushes (HERE, if you’re interested) which I LOVE. It made the process go a lot faster than painting with a paintbrush.
Once I got him colored in, I decided all that detail in the rooster’s tail was just too busy. So I took out the outlines and just left the feather details. I kind of love how that worked out.
And finally, I added kind of a sunburst behind him, to make him really sing:
Of course, when I showed it to Matthew, the first thing he said was, “Well, we need to write Drew’s name on it somewhere, and we also need to put Bobbledy Books on there somewhere, and we also probably should include Brian (our friend who played a lot of the music on the album with Drew). And, um, isn’t the song ‘Where IS My Chicken?’ and not ‘Where’s My Chicken?'”
Dang.
Dang, dang, dang.
Sometimes I really zone out when I get into a zone!
Corrections and adjustments to come!
If any of you out there feel like drawing the album cover for an album called “Where Is My Chicken?” I would love to see it! Post it in the comments below, and maybe when you get your copy of the album in the mail, it will have YOUR cover on it, not mine!
Sometimes when I’m out in the world, I find something that looks to me like something else. Yesterday, while I was doing some gardening, I picked up a little knob of a stick and was about to toss it into the compost pile when I noticed it looking at me. In kind of a defiant way. I felt a little bad, so I brought it home and took its picture.
It looked like a lizard to me.
A lizard with attitude, telling me how he’d like me to prepare his lunch. I guess I’m glad he wasn’t planning on eating ME for lunch.
And I guess I’m glad I made the drawing, though now I really don’t know what to do with the stick.
Well, Matthew’s fear last weekalmost came true this week. We only got a single submission for our drawing prompt this week. Normally, this would send Matthew into fretting that the drawing prompts aren’t interesting enough, the blog content isn’t good enough, that we were totally misguided in thinking that posting kids’ drawings on a blog would be interesting to anyone, that this whole idea of trying to get kids involved in writing and drawing is a failure, a failure, a FAILURE! But luckily, he is in Houston at the moment, where he was supposed to be doing his “real” job, but instead is holed up in a dingy hotel room being sick sick sick as a dog. And so I am left in charge here, and have just informed myself that the lack of responses this week is due to the flu and the onset of solar flare season. And so – onwards!
The drawing prompt was to draw what was growing now that it’s spring (sort of).
The submission we received from Joe suggests that though Joe did not fall prey to the flu or solar flares, he has been battling a fresh crop of the Bad Piggies.
Though seasonal, Bad Piggies are definitely perennials. They can even grow in space, which makes them especially hard to deal with. Matthew weeds Bad Piggies on long and boring phone calls, and Kato is quite an excellent Bad Piggy gardener as well. I am wholly unfamiliar with physics, and therefore believe that Bad Piggies are for the birds. I particularly like how Joe has depicted the Piggies as pretty amicable guys. They don’t seem to mind at all that they’re about to get toppled.
Alden decided that ladybugs were going to arrive come spring. Little did I know that ladybug infestations actually occur in the winter, when the bugs decide to come inside where it’s warm and hibernate rather than spend all winter outside. Not so dumb, those ladybugs. I learned all about ladybug infestations here and then found some fun info here, including this awesome photo:
That’s a LOT of ladybugs. Actually, to be fair, Alden only said that one ladybug was growing up out of the ground. A ladybug with pink ribbons on her wings. As the ladybug grew, so did the bubbles. It is unclear how or why the bubbles were involved, but I’m just telling the story as it was told to me. It turns out that this particular ladybug is special – the ribbons mean that she is the “angel of the parade.” No further explanation was offered.
Kato’s springtime involves crazy roller coasters growing up out of the ground under the big hot sun. It’s dark outside, because it’s spring, and there’s also a blue rocketship (Kato logic).
There was also an airplane, but a new pair of scissors facilitated a destructive distraction, and the airplane was promptly cut off of the picture and into tiny pieces. It does not fly.
I was thinking about how frustrating it must be to be a flower bulb, sitting in the cold cold dirt all winter long, under piles of snow, pining for the warm days of spring. It occurred to me that if you didn’t like your neighbors, there wouldn’t be much you could do about it. Even once spring has sprung and you’ve sent your flowers up into the air, you’re probably still a little crabby about the whole ordeal, year in and year out.
We’re putting this one up for auction on ebay, HERE. Go on and have a look. These auction items have been going for a song lately, so get your deals while you can.
Also, if you’re interested in signing up for Auction Alerts by email, SIGN UP HERE.
Until next time, folks. Here’s hoping the flu and solar flares settle down before the week is out.
This just in from Bobbledy club member Simon, who drew a coral snake just because he felt like it.
Sometimes we do things because people tell us to and sometimes just because the spirit moves us.
Way to go, Simon. I think this fellow is wonderful. My favorite part is the red stripes near his head that make it look like he’s wearing a scarf. I also love his bright red tongue sticking straight down.
I wonder if an entire book might be written about him.
Hello Everyone! Matthew is lying in bed snoring away like a monster truck, so I thought I’d write today’s post even though Matthew usually likes to write the ones about drawing prompt responses. I should first explain that he isn’t snoring away because he’s a lazy bag of bones – he’s actually just the fifth one in our family to come down with a cold and his nose is all stuffed up. And, to be fair, the rest of us have been snoring like monster trucks too.
Except for August, who’s just given up on sleeping altogether.
(You may now thank me for not posting that photo at full size.)
Anyway. I thought I could cut Matthew a break and write this post, this post that is purportedly about last week’s drawing prompt but somehow instead turned into a post about snot and monster trucks. This is probably why Matthew usually writes these.
Alright. Well, back to the business at hand:
So, last week’s drawing prompt was to draw something or someone floating. Alden has been studying space in school, and immediately knew what to draw:
She’s floating inside a rocket ship. She drew an escape hatch for herself out the bottom of the ship because she was feeling a little cramped. I love the idea of floating in space. Did you know that when you’re in space, there’s nothing to hold you down to the ground, so you just float? It’s pretty awesome.
That’s about twenty more reasons to become an astronaut (and one more reason not to become a cat).
I liked the thought of floating around in space so much that I drew myself out there among the stars.
I’m glad I could draw myself a lifeline, though. If I were out there, I’d want to be tied to something.
Kato, like Alden, gripped his pencil with inspiration and immediately knew what to draw.
Unfortunately, I have no idea what it is supposed to be and Kato refused to tell.
Matthew drew this:
The whole family floating in hermetically sealed bubbles. I think he was hoping that we could keep all of our own germs inside our own bubbles and not spread the plague. That’s what’s called “fantasy.”
And finally, I will move on to some actual submissions by actual kids who do not live in the barn. Spencer and Tyler are such stalwarts at drawing prompts, though, they are welcome to visit anytime. And we will make sure to have lots of candy and pie for them when they come.
Spencer decided to draw a floating pirate ship.
Though it doesn’t sound like it will be floating for long – “The pirate ship is dropping bombs in the ocean to sink the other ships. The minesweeper is picking up bombs so they won’t explode. The pirate in the lookout tower is trying to see the minesweeper, but he’s looking in the wrong direction! There’s also an aircraft carrier directing airplanes so the pilots have a good flight. All the boats are floating… but not for long if they hit a bomb!”
Yikes. I’m glad I’m floating way up in space out of the way of all that mayhem!
Tyler went the more peaceful route.
“My picture is of a shark floating in the ocean. He has a lot of colors but is NOT a rainbow shark. I’m taking a ride on the shark. He’s very nice. Also, at the bottom of the ocean, there are a lot of treasure chests and seaweed. The treasure isn’t floating. It sinks.”
I like how matter-of-fact Tyler is about all that treasure. I suppose if you’re riding around on a non-rainbow shark, you’ve probably got other things on your mind – even if the shark is very nice.
Well, that’s all for this week folks! I’m going to send out an earnest plea to get out your pencils and crayons and paper this week for the next drawing prompt, and SEND IN YOUR PICTURES! We love to see what you’ve been drawing, but when there are only a few drawings to talk about, you get stuck with a long ramble about snot, sickness and space! So sorry!
Thanks again to Spencer and Tyler for sticking with us. It sure makes me happy thinking of you drawing with us, even though we aren’t actually together.
