You may remember that we have a pet crawfish named Bob. This is our sixth (sith) Bob, so I call him Darth Bob. In an effort to provide enrichment and fresh food I asked the pet store to let me have some pest snails. Normally people do everything to get rid of these things because they are born pregnant and will infest a tank pretty quickly.

So I started with about 15 and now have somewhere around 2000. I also added plants in tea lights. Darth Bob can eat whatever grows outside the lantern.

I really enjoy watching the snails and it inspired me to draw a few and I did a mini painting.

There’s a timelapse of me painting the snail over at the youtubes: https://youtu.be/CrY8Khg3Frk

Recently, the whole family took a trip with some friends to the Saint Francis Wolf Sanctuary. I took a lot of pics, but mostly of mushrooms I wanted to paint later.

In the gift shop on the way out I bought a patch for my motorcycle vest. When it came time to sew it on, however, I realized I hadn’t ridden the bike and it wouldn’t be right sewing on a patch I hadn’t earned. So I decided to load up and ride out for the day. About that time, Girl2 texted me to let me know she was home with me. I had no idea. I told her my plan and she said, “Say less! I’ll be right back down in jeans!” And that is how I ended up riding with my little girl for the day.

Since she suffered the ride out there, I got her a patch too. Now she needs a leather vest.

Also, here are the mushrooms…

If you paint them, please tag me in IG @theartisticbiker

A recent acquaintance has invited me to display some of my works at a local fund raiser for dobermann rescues. That sounds like a lot of fun to me. She suggested I may get some commissions based on my dog paintings. I hope so, but really I’m just looking forward to a good time. She did send me some pictures of a couple of dobermanns I could paint for display. Here are the work ups I have done on them so far

I’ll update further during and after the show.

This week I trekked out to Cullen Park in northwest Houston to do a little sketching at the Koch-Schmidt cemetery. Established in 1854 this cemetery sits inside Cullen Park just north or the Addicks Reservoir. There are a lot of these little cemeteries around, even in the golf course I like to go to. This one is chained off so I can’t really get up inside for great pics, but it was a fun day for me at least.

There’s a video at the YouTube showing the sketch set up and process: https://youtu.be/trPzDCfZxzM