Funny animal pic dump.

Decided to grace my blog with some of the cute and funny animals I have recently encountered.

 Arwen, our own cat, looking thoroughly freaked XD

The local petshop has meerkats. Just for show, I believe, not for sale. They're awesome. 

"Life" drawing in and around Galway

As someone who has lived in Galway City, Ireland for over 5 years and loves to draw, I thought it would be nice to make a list of the places I like to go to draw. I am hoping it will be useful for visiting artists or local artists looking for some new spots to be inspired by.
I like to draw that which lives, people, animals, plants and trees and drawing from life is good practise. Of course drawing people, plants and trees can be found all over so I am dedicating this post to good spots for drawing animals.

1. The zoology corridor, NUIG Galway.
Located on the university campus and free to visit, this is a great place to draw a variety of animals from "life". I use the word life loosely because all the animals here are dead and subjected to taxidermia. This is great for those less accustomed with life drawing as the animals clearly never move a muscle but you can still observe them from different angles, something you do not get with drawing from a single photo. There's a great variety of animals to choose from and I can spend hours there. The only disadvantage is that they are only open 9.30AM-5PM Mon-Fri so if you are otherwise occupied during office hours, you don't get much opportunity to go there.

2. Galway Atlantaquaria, National Aquarium of Ireland.
Overlooking the popular Galway Promenade in Salthill, the aquarium is a fantastic place to draw fish from life. The aquariums inside are filled with local sealife like fish, rays and sharks as well as some less local beings, including piranha fish. There are a good few chairs and benches to sit down with a sketchbook and the landscaping in the aquariums makes for a lovely complete picture to draw. It is not free but take a look at the website for the admission fees and membership deal.

3. The Burren Birds of Prey Centre.
Not in Galway but about an 50 minute drive away in the neighbouring county Clare, this is a wonderful place to visit with the purpose of drawing the animals. They are a zoo/sanctuary specifically for birds of prey, such as owls, hawks, falcons and eagles. These animals don't waste engery on needless moving around so while not sitting as still as my deceased friends at the university, you still get plenty of opportunity to capture a pose.

Another place worthy of note is the Natural History Museum in Dublin, this place is like the zoology corridor but bigger. It's a little eerie but I love it there.

Ireland also has a variety of zoos that are worth looking up but I have no experience drawing in them. I hope this short list is useful for people who love to portray animals that find themselves in the West of Ireland at any point.

Deserting Tumblr for Blogger

I just created this additional Blogspot page to separate my  more random posts from my portfolio blog. So far I have been using Tumblr for this but commenting on blogs doesn't always seem an option with them and I expect to find a slightly more mature crowd here.

I am passionate about animals and have recently started on the road to a cruelty free lifestyle in terms of what I eat and cosmetics so a lot of my posts will probably be about that. My other interests include art (mainly illustration), literature, film and TV, hiking and other outdoor pursuits, spirituality and a lot of other stuff that does not immediately come to mind. So this blog will probably be a bit of a mashup ranging from shouting principles from my imaginary soapbox to downright geeky fangirling but I will try to keep it as coherent and well written as possible with plenty of pics, or it didn't happen.

I would welcome some tips on the following:
- Who to follow on here with similar interests what I mention up here.
- Good video instructions on how to pimp your blogspot, as coding and anything of that nature is very far from my thing.

Now to see if this works to import my Tumblr posts to this blog. Good luck to me!

Going full time cruelty free.

In the last few months of 2012 I started living with an increased awareness of how our consuming styles affect those living creatures that cannot defend themselves against humankind but feel pain and fear just as we do: the animals. This was always something I had in the back of my head and I have been buying freerange eggs and chicken and largely non animal tested cosmetics for a long time. However, my principles were often still overruled by convenience, finances, cravings and whatever else “stood in the way”. But enough is enough and it is time to stand by my principles. And these are that animals should not have to needlessly suffer to serve our purpose.

This does not mean that I will become a vegan or even a vegetarian. I do not see a problem with eating meat, eggs and dairy or using other animal products such as leather and wool, as long as the animal it came from was raised in an ethical way and is not threatened to be extinct. Animals kill and eat other animals and to me the only difference between us and them is that we can feel guilt and can think beyond our need to feed. I believe eating and using animal products is part of our nature, we have done it for many years. Where we have gone wrong is the intensively farming of animals for this purpose; causing pain, fear and disease among those we should protect.

So this is my principle and I will stand by it by reducing my consumption of meat and only sourcing it on rare occasions from local farms of which I know the animals were well treated. The same goes for any other animal products and cosmetics: I make a special point of not buying anything as frivolous as an eyeshadow when the products or ingredients were cruelly tested on lab animals.

I want to continue this blog by sharing my musings and some of the products I end up buying as part of the cruelty free lifestyle and where I source them from. I hope this will benefit some people and inspire them to keep in mind our animal friends when spending their money.

One of my major examples when it comes to food awareness is Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall. I very much share his opinions and have recently bought and cooked from his River Cottage Veg! book. It has wonderful recipes that I can recommend to vegetarians and meat eaters alike.