Time for some more bunnies

Compact

Credit: Cute Overload.
Sorry, but their permalink didn't work.

And loose

Same.

We hadn't done this for a while. Bravely, I go there so you don't have to.

Pirate

Used with permission.
Thanks to Anna Greece.

When I wrote to ask permission to use this picture, she wrote back to say that she'd already visited this site looking for ideas about pirate pictures.

My fifteen minutes, I guess.

Picture

Boy butts #4.

Michelangelo's David.

Any image of this work is iconic. But apart from the most obvious point of interest (it's so little!) the most powerful and compelling part is that hand.

When I look at this, the arm, the slouched shoulder, the hips akimbo, all point to this hand.

We all have experienced drawing, however badly. But I can't even begin to imagine sculpting from stone, where you have to anticipate a wrist bent just so, so that it connects again, so things don't break. Where you need a convenient tree stump, so things don't fall over.


That hand is over-sized, and out of proportion and has sinews and veins that make it individual.
In stark contrast to the the rather generic rendition of boy-bits nearby. I've always imagined that he used his own hand as a model, and that this hand is the most accurate portrait of the artist that we have.


From people who draw, I've often heard that hands are the most difficult to render. The most famous hands in western art belong to Michelangelo.

Oh, and leaving aside the hands, this, from the fresco in the Sistine Chapel, is tiny, too.

The reason for this is, I suspect, a bit of prudery, conveniently together with the fact that it was the style of ancient Greek sculptures and vase paintings that Renaissance artists chose to emulate.

This post got hung up in the queue while I was trying to do something from Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio). Even though he painted the most famous putti ever, as near as I could find he never did bottoms.

Compare and contrast: Butts #3,

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock at Dirty John Bonny.

Pish

No, not that. Pish!.
Sculpture in the Iya Valley, Japan.

Talk to the animals

It's pronounced just like it looks, but with lots of sibilance. You usually say "pish-pish."

It's a bit of universal language understood by both birds and mammals. Loosely translated: "Hey, you!"

I learned it from naturalist and guide Marc Egger in Africa. He used it to stop a group of bontebok antelope to look back over their shoulders and make a photo opportunity for me that you can see here. He used it to summon otherwise invisible cisticolas (little warbler birds) from a forest of weeds. They'd fly up, take a "wazzup?" look around, then disappear. They could have been shuttlecocks for all I knew.

But I learned the power of pish.

And it was a "pish-pish" that made that little coyote look up at me, posing prettily for that picture.

Last night I met some possums in the park in the dark. "Hello, br'er possum," got no response. Then I pished. Possum froze, and looked back at me. Wish I owned a speedlight and had the camera out. Instead you get a picture of a boy peeing off a cliff.

Try it out. You'll be like Harry Potter speaking Parseltongue.

Coyotes

From across the Kishwaukee river at 5:46 the other morning.

There were three of them, coyote pups, scampering around, cute as all hell. It took a minute for me to get the camera out, so all I can show you is this one.

Related.

Coyote

I met another coyote (Canis latrans) last night. I was walking near the river near First Street, and we ran into one another. Coyote was not two meters away - I just looked and said out loud,

"Hey, are you a fox or a baby coyote?"

Coyote went behind a tree. Stupid question. I'd already decided: for sure a coyote. All legs and bones, and too tall to be a fox. Still a pup, he didn't have the raging mange that most are afflicted with.

Coyote peeked out from around the trunk, decided that I wasn't a threat, and trotted off into the darkness.

I might have said "Godspeed," or only thought it.

Joni Mitchell.
Coyote
About five.

[Update: video rescue
]