Yes, I know, it’s Tuesday, not Monday. For those of you who follow me on the Books of Faces, you know why. For those of you who don’t, basically, I spent yesterday eyeball deep (my eyeballs, not Willy’s) in the lovely aromas associated with fixing a plumbing problem. Why not just call a plumber, you ask? Cuz I’m me, that’s why.

Anywhat, ever since my amazing wife gave me a Vest of Holding for Father’s Day (so I can carry all the things), I’ve taken to carrying some art supplies with me whenever I leave the house. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time, but my supplies were just too cumbersome prior to The Vest. Now when I’m out and about and have some time to kill, I can dig out my moleskin sketch book and choose from a variety of drawing implements and let my eyes and my brain play. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve had chimeras on the brain lately, so they’ve been filling up my sketchbook.

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Trying to think about different body types and animal combinations.

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A more traditional griffon-looking animal, pondering different big cats, different birds…

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Daydreaming about sea-based chimeras. I’m really interested in exploring the creature on the right, who’s got bits of a leatherback sea turtle, a manta ray, and a squid, among others.

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This one started taking shape after thinking about recent talk of dinosaurs being feathered (something I’ve thought about for years). I was with my oldest son when I started this one, and he mentioned something about giraffes when I was getting toward the neck. It was an animal I hadn’t really thought about throwing into the mix before hand, and it wound up somewhat influencing the overall body posture. Another critter I’ll develop more at some point.

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Another more griffon-like chimera, still considering all the different possibilities and markings.

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I’m kind of thinking about populating an entire planet with chimeras, which means I need to come up with creatures for not only different environments, but also different niches within a given ecosystem. This guy would be a squirrel/chipmunk sized critter,who currently looks a tad much like a Jackalope.

There you have it, a peak inside my sketchbook, which is really kind of like a peak inside my brain. Even more so than this here website. I’m not sure how productive I’ll be this week. Already my plumbing problems ate yesterday, we have company coming this weekend, and I have to get my oldest prepped for summer camp. But, should I make good use of my time, I have a small favor/project to do for a relative, I need to take the final steps to get my t-shirt business thingy ready, I need to finish 10 Things and then figure out what to do with it, I want to get back into Revery, I want to play with the chimeras…