Meet Gulper. He’s the biggest, most easy-going fish in the sea.  All he wants in life is to drift through nice sunny waters.  He’d love it if you joined him for a swim, and you’re welcome to hitch a ride on his fin. 🙂

Today we have a short comic featuring one of Gulper’s giant friends. It’s speculated that these gentle giants would’ve gathered together to feed on giant clouds of plankton and other tiny creatures in the ocean.

Making progress…

February’s been an exciting month! We had a frozen week in Texas, and though my family never lost power or water, we didn’t have phones or Wifi for a little over a week. We also borrowed a little milk cow this month!

If you’ve been around for a while you’d know that my husband and I have five young children, and that we have a bit of a homestead here in the Texas hill country. We have chickens, dogs, cats, horses, a little garden in the works, and I finally worked up the gumption to try my hand at milking a cow.

Yes. A cow! Am I crazy? Maybe. We’ve been doing this homestead thing for a while, and once you start you tend to build up on what you have. It starts with a few chickens for eggs, a little garden, then you get a few chickens to raise them for meat…it’s all about a connection with real food and where it comes from, about teaching lessons of life and nutrition to the children who depend on you, and make the entire process a fun family experience that turns into an entire lifestyle. But that’s a topic for a completely different sort of blog, and you’re here for the prehistoric critters. 😀

The basic thing is that sometimes the homesteading stuff completely takes over (in a good way), and the illustration of cute prehistoric critters takes a back seat for a little while. This month was one of them because we jumped on the chance to “test-drive” a cow for a month to see if it was something that would work for us. Borrow a cow with no obligation of keeping it if things didn’t work out, no charge except for the cost of feeding her while she’s here, plus fresh milk for the kids? With a deal that good, plus the scarcity of milk last year, I wasn’t going to let that chance pass me by.

Only problem was that this cow was used to being out on a pasture with her buddies. She didn’t know how to walk along with a rope, let alone how to be milked. She had as much learning to do as I did, because I’d never touched a cow before! It all worked out though, because she’s a sweet little thing very motivated by food. Training her and learning how to milk her correctly took up the first half of my month. I didn’t draw anything except for the little valentine’s I made for the kids on my new iPad. 😀 Most of them are not Jurassic critters, but they are dinosaurs, so I’ll post them for your enjoyment anyway.

So I’ve had excellent and fulfilling progress on my own personal life and the homestead, but anything art related ground down to a halt. Once the cow and I had a rhythm going and I didn’t have to spend so much time with her, that’s when Texas froze over and we lost WiFi.

The last week was a scramble to catch up with the month! I hope you enjoy Gulper’s update. 🙂

Come to think of it, these Valentine doodles were fun and easy to do. If you’d like to see more in this style, then I can bring back Fossil Friday very quickly. Let me know what you think in the comments!

Coming APRIL 1st…

This little critter loves to dive after anything shiny

Share your guess in the comments! He’s one of the critters over on the critter page. 🙂