Song for the living….

Apparently this is the part of the semester where instructors are more likely to walk around and stare at what you’re doing, because another one came over and noticed my doodles. I did them before class technically started this time, so still no worries (not that it should really be a problem in any class but Spanish anyhow, since I’m actually doing well in all the others).

I’m not sure whether the “holy crap!” was for the skeleton, the scare(y)crow, or the cat-Cubone thing — or just the tone in general — but I’m going to consider it a compliment from her anyhow.

And my Pharaoh-hound Anubis with the necklace from before was kind of disappointing, so here’s more of a proper jackal, wearing nothing but a mischievous smile. Furthermore, since it’s kind of a theme at this point, this one’s for Sea Wolf’s “Song For the Dead,” which I’ve had for a while but which happens to come after Twin Skeleton’s Hotel and Emperor’s New Clothes on my Halloween playlist.

I posted this a bit too late, so I guess a Happy Halloween is in order as well! We’ll see if I manage to post the last one on time tomorrow, or if I’m too busy partying.

Har. I think I’ll be fine.

No wealth, no land, no silver, no gold….

I’m back, and more behind than ever! But midterms are over now, so maybe I’ll be a bit more timely again for a while.

Working back from today, we have:

Fossa vs. primate (no, I actually haven’t been watching Madagascar recently). The pencil fill is technically cheating, but I got bored after I finished the lemur. This one’s technically today and yesterday.

Next is … yeah, even I don’t know for sure what’s going on here. Another looong day of grammar.

And finally, the one today’s post is named for:

A raven trying to bribe Death with something shiny. It never works, but they always try….

He’s got a whole new game….

A brief interlude again from The Drawing; I simply don’t do well with monotony, I’m afraid.

This little guy isn’t anything particularly special, just yet another griffin of sorts. Since I gave him a raven’s face, more or less, I decided to make his facial patterning a sort of homage to the Haida artwork in which Raven and other Pacific Northwestern creatures figure so prominently. Raven’s a trickster, a shape-shifter, and always looking for something new — so really, it’d be no surprise if a Raven-critter like this turned up one day or another. I wouldn’t trust him to be after what he says he is, though, and I certainly would think twice about any riddles he asked. That sphinx was an amateur compared to Raven when it comes to such things.

Trickster that he is, it was little trouble for me to work Raven into the assignments for nearly every college course I took one year — his playful aspects for Children’s Literature, his human side for Cultural Anthropology, a deep dig into his personal life for Library Instruction, and so on. Each time, I learned something entirely new about the bright-eyed little prankster, and it’s really no wonder he holds such a prominent place in our stories and fables.

I must say, though, that while I love the rhythm of The Raven as much as anyone, and like many others have made it one of the few pieces of poetry I’ve bothered to memorize, I can’t say “ungainly” and “gaunt” seem like particularly accurate descriptors of any corvid who isn’t stuffed. Perhaps he should have stuck with the parrot.

Side note: I seemed to have picked an unexpectedly obscure song for my title quote today. Thanks, Pandora — if you’d warn me about these things ahead of time I’d memorize the artist names so I could actually find them again.

I kid. Pandora, you are adorable in a bumbling, puppy-like way. One of these days you’ll actually figure out that I don’t want to add “Take On Me” to ANY of my stations. Not the 00’s pop station, not the creepy Halloween music station, and for the fourth time ESPECIALLY NOT the Christmas station.  But again, good effort. Good effort.