#creative days

I watched Look Back last night and felt incredibly inspired to create more art. So I made this account to motivate myself to create art everyday. Whether it’s a scribble on a napkin or a fully rendered drawing, I’m going to do something everyday to practice my skill and share it here.

Today art is of some Smooth-billed Ani birds. I expect to finish this piece in the next few days

“You’ve survived in the swamp since you were a hatchling, haven’t you?” Karno said.

Gwaihir nodded. “Oh, forever and ever.”

Karno sighed. “See, that’s why I respect you. Even considering that you’re like this, you know how to manage yourself. If you didn’t, you would be dead.”

Gwaihir tilted her head. “What do you mean by ‘like this’? Oh, listen to that frog -- isn’t it beautiful? That’s a river warden. They suffocate their prey before they eat them, which some call cruel, but I wonder if it’s truly crueler than being eaten alive.”

“Like that,” Kuros said. “What does the frog matter?”

Gwaihir frowned. “What do you mean? Everything matters. It’s all part of the swamp.”

“The swamp is an obstacle.” Karno stretched his neck. “It’s here to challenge us, to pit us against itself so that we may prove our mettle. But the frog? It isn’t a threat to us; it isn’t dinner. So it doesn’t matter.”

“The swamp isn’t here for you.” Gwaihir’s voice turned suddenly cold, even angry. Karno had never heard her like this. “It doesn’t exist to serve as an ‘obstacle’ in your little schemes. It doesn’t care what you want. It is for itself. And the frog is part of it. If you don’t respect the little pieces, you don’t respect the swamp. And if you don’t respect the swamp, it will kill you.”

“So I know how I got here, and Zyere won’t shut up about how his caravan left him behind, and I’m assuming Gwaihir formed out of a sentient cypress log,” Dusk said, “but I don’t know what you’re doing in the swamp.”

“I told Zyere this already,” Karno said absently, clawing his way through a particularly stubborn bramble.

Dusk shrugged. “I wasn’t there, was I? So I still need to hear it.”

Karno glanced down at the smaller tundra -- not so much smaller, anymore; she was growing rapidly. “You don’t need to hear anything.”

“Then I want to hear it.” Dusk folded her paws primly under her and looked at Karno expectantly.

He gave in. “Fine, but I’m only talking if you help me cut a path.”

Dusk looked askance at the bushes. “I’ll get burrs in my fur. Ask Gwaihir; you know they’ll just part before her like magic.”

“Gwaihir’s busy getting food. We can’t let her do everything for us. We’ll get soft.”

Dusk ran a claw through her fur. It wasn’t as silky as it could have been, in better conditions, but it was considerably nicer than it had been when Gwaihir had found her. “What’s wrong with being soft?”

“It gets you killed,” Karno snapped, more heatedly than the question really deserved. Dusk reared back a little, and Karno went on angrily, “Now, are you going to help? If not, leave me to my work.”

“I don’t think I am, actually.” The tundra raised her snout in the air and picked her way primly through the mud, calling, “Zyere! Can you tell me that story about the harpy and the guardian again?”

“How did you find me?” Dusk asked. “I thought I had hidden myself well.”

Gwaihir glanced down at the little tundra and smiled. “The swamp brought you to me. It knew you needed help, and it knew I could help.”

“Ri-ight,” Dusk said skeptically. “Does the swamp bring you dragons often?”

“Not dragons, no, but it does like to show me interesting things. Look at this!” Gwaihir turned over a rock and extracted a wriggling white millipede from underneath, holding it up before Dusk. Dusk didn’t recoil, as Zyere would, or snap at the bug, as Karno would. Instead she held very still and examined it thoroughly.

“I see,” Dusk said. “It seems like that white color would be disadvantageous for camouflage.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Gwaihir said. She set the millipede carefully back down and watched it scurry off into the mud. “What’s camouflage?”

“It’s when a creature looks like the environment around it, for hiding.” Dusk was a very clever little tundra. “A white millipede would stand out in the dark mud, making it easier for predators to locate and eat it.”

“I think that one was special,” Gwaihir said. “Perhaps intended for some grand destiny. A savior of the millipedes.”