I was supposed to clean today, which usually involves putting books in orderly stacks and discovering the new and exciting secret places the cats have found to poop. I came across this notebook from over ten years ago and thought it might be fun to post the least embarrassing sketches in it - if you've ever looked at my stuff and thought I draw half-decent, prepare to have your illusions destroyed.

Starting at the upper right is a little dinosaur or reptilian critter of unknown species. He certainly looks cheerful, though. Below him is the rough sketch of an Australopithecus I eventually painted for extra credit in Anthropology, based on the bonobo chimp. Underneath them is a purple gremlin-like thing with a stick, which was inspired by the wonderfully bizarre sphynx cats. I think I used this in a D&D game.

Back up at the top, there's a sabertoothed tiger facing off against a little chupacabra-like thing. Below that, a caricature of my friend Jon and a doodle of a Pachycephalosaurus head. Further down is a drawing of my were-centaur D&D character, Talito. It's a pretty godawful picture - if I redid it today, I'd make the equine back shorter and the human torso longer and more slender. The curly mohawk look still amuses me, though. The thing below him is an elf, I think . . . I just realized that where I placed him, he appears to be shocked by the sight of Talito's, ahem, equipment. I swear, I did not til this very moment see that.

Back up at the top is a jaguar doing the "blah" face. The monkey-thing and the sort of cat/genet are actually early stabs at designing Kinowa for my D&D world, Caranoctia (there's a finished drawing of them in my gallery). They were designed to be cute and fluffy and replace hobbits, gnomes and that sort of thing. Below them is a Caranoctian critter that clearly shows even back then I'd settled on a "look" for the big carnivores: bipedal, digitigrade, long tail with tassel, humanoid forelimbs, feline-reptilian faces, bristly manes and long ears.

And finally in the bottom right corner is a sketch of REM's Michael Stipe, who's cute . . .