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Sketching Subsection: Office Art... *cough* ... Erm. Right. Forgive me my little excesses. This
is the first, the beginning, the start of it all. There occurred a discussion
of the difference between a cockatiel I had drawn and a ring-necked pheasant.
The differences are vast, indeed, and my pride demanded I lay out said
differences in detail during one furtive lunch break. Thus, a ring-necked
pheasant adorned the November calendar.
The pheasant looked a little lonely, so a cockatiel just had to join him. Besides, what better way to show the difference in structure and pose? How cute! Black and brown bled into my orange marker, making the pumpkin look a little rotten --- it's not. It just looks that way. 
December rolls around, and the request is made in the form of a cookie tin cover. The pheasant gets the metaphorical boot and a splendid partridge basks in the fluorescent light from the safety of his pear tree. By this time I'm practicing with how many shades of brown I can make among the brown, black, orange, and red. Well, shade a little bit. Oh, look at the top pear, will you? It's a bit shaded. It is, too! And that tree branch didn't get those colors by itself, I tell you.
A jolly sprig of holly joined the partridge toward the end of the month. I assume no responsibility. I was just standing next to the board, and my fingers wandered towards the markers ... and sometimes I'm not fully responsible for my actions, you see. In Gothos years I'm still underage. That would be why I don't drink alcohol: underage, see? (Well, not really; but it makes a good story, right? Right. Stop looking at me like that.) Please appreciate the fine shading on the leaves. 
It was January and still quite cold and dark and grey, so I decided on a dash of color. The only bright marker I had was red, so cardinals it was, all along the bottom. They've got cute crests --- not as cute as my own weechum's, but still cute. Shading them was a little tough. The orange and brown markers kept erasing the red marker instead of blending with it. I had the same trouble with the black. 
Actually, the same person who helped instigate the ring-necked pheasant incident provided me with the reference pictures for the cardinals in the form of a hunting magazine cover (quite a beautiful painting; my markers don't do it justice). Anyway, cardinals are full of faded purples and reds, which I tried to capture. I think the trouble is not mixing the colors in the split second I have before the dry erase markers, well, dry. That's why Mr. Flying Cardinal looks streaky. The misses on the branch turned out pretty well, although they look almost as bright as the mister. Ah, well. 
The top corner of the board was blank, which was almost an insult, so I filled it up with a little snowperson. I didn't decide whether it was a snowman or a snowwoman; I mean, a snowman is shapely and rounded to begin with, so it's a little tough to the untrained eye to tell the difference. The culture of the snowpeople is quite interesting and almost Buddhist in its detachment to material things. This is demonstrated by how a snowperson will just drop a limb or a head over the course of its lifetime. They seems to spend most of their time contemplating the vast amounts of information coded in snow crystals and the patterns in which they lay on the ground. Very deep race, the snowpeople. Oh, to balance out all the red from the cardinals, I gave the snowperson some trees. Appreciate the fine shading on their boughs. 
Requests were made for warmer pictures sometime around March-ish. I supposed I had been focusing on the winter critters a bit. That and I left the cardinals up for a month or two. I was busy! Therefore, a bright-eyed robin made its appearance, along with some crocuses and a hyacinth. You can see a bit of the hyacinth, there, in the corner. I'd show you more, but the picture I took devolved into a blob of purple. The little orange-brown thing on the ground is a worm. The robin is eyeing the worm. The worm is looking worried. 
With spring comes that quaint tradition of daylight savings time. Spring forward, fall back. I lost an hour of sleep! Or drawing! Or singing with my darling birdy! 
Just in case you thought that I did not get any work done at all due to the dry erase board, think again. I do not always have enough time in a month to finish a picture. I can usually get it done in two or three days, off and on, when I get the time; but some months are just too busy. April turned out that way. Thus, I only finished one bluebird. The singing one is much cuter. In retrospect, I should have done it first. 
There is always a cockatiel on the calendar! It's like Where's Waldo, only far more cute. 
May/June turned out to be the month of the butterflies. I think someone might have been talking about the great monarch migration, or perhaps someone mentioned that they'd never seen a monarch, or maybe it was all in my head. We used to have a mimosa tree in my family's back yard. It was a messy tree, but the butterflies loved the blossoms! (I didn't see that many monarchs, but I saw lots of the yellow swallow-tails.) We have a lot of irises, too, and I'd just spent some time over the weekend staking them back up so that their heads weren't cut off by the lawnmower. Butterflies and irises. It could have been worse, I think. Appreciate the fine shading on the Giant Dutch Bearded Iris. Or else. 
I actually had to look online during lunch for a picture of a monarch, so that I could get the vane patterns right. These guys stayed up for two or three months before they were erased. I tried a dinosaur month with moderate success and contemplated a dragon month. By then, though, I became quite busy, what with grad school and all, and did not have the time to do another. It was fun while it lasted, but I'm glad to be busy. 
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