Meeting new people

Mostly on paper. And at work. I've actually met a fairly large number of new folks at work over the past few weeks (comparatively. Ok fine, 3). The unending torrent of baffled Germans and Japanese tourists radiating optimistic cluelessness occasionally breaks and someone comes along with whom I automatically feel some common thread. Generally I terrify them somehow during the course of a conversation, or they become offended or disgusted. In some cases they make me laugh. I'll never see any of them again. This is the trouble with crippling social anxiety combined with an acute sense of loneliness. In any case, I'm painting again.

The above stretch of picture is a bad shot of this-

Combined with the older one I did in some bygone era. I plan on doing a great deal of these. By the finish, it'll probably be 5 panels, and 10 feet long. Next up, a whole row of gentleman centaurs. I've got a course plotted.

Yesterday, I was given a beaver skull. It was promised to me a long while ago, by a biologist named RJ who was in town to examine the Cal Academy's specimen collection for a book he is writing for UC Berkeley about spiders. The man has an exuberant interest in animal skulls that borders on the inappropriate, so he's my kind of people.

I didn't realize Castor canadensis had such a big head. It's definitely the largest beaver skull I've ever seen personally, though not surprising because I haven;' seen many. One broken incisor and no mandible, but otherwise 100% complete. Jackpot. I'm going to mount this one exploded in a bell jar. Hopefully one in between the small one for the squirrel and the large one for the goat. It'd make a nice set. Anyway RJ, duly impressed by my skullfuckery, also encouraged me to try my hand at a full skeleton mount. I would definitely like to take a crack at it. He also wondered if I had tried any avian skulls. It'd also like to take a crack at that, but that optical bone ring is a bugger to preserve.

I'm off to meet with me Ma. It's her birthday today, and in town for the evening so I'm buying dinner. Then I'm going to set myself down and paint panel 3, the stately procession of the gentleman centaurs. Anticipate progress.