Black Knight Sketch

I feel like I’ve been a bit lazy recently. I’ve started going to the gym again and that has taken up a lot of my time but that is just no excuse. So, in order to rectify this little problem I’ve decided I need to set myself the task of updating my blog once a day again. Whether I can achieve this or not is debatable but the intention is there so we’ll just have to see how I get on with it.

 So, on to todays post. I’ve decided that with all the watercolour work I’ve been doing recently I’ve been ignoring the grass roots of sitting down and sketching so that’s what I’ve done today. I’m rather proud of the result as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before I’m not usually happy with my male figures but this one has turned out quite well. The source photo was taken by a friend and the subject is a member of the Plantagenet Society, when this photo was taken I believe he was taking a moment to glower at the audience. If you live in England I highly recommend getting along to one of their shows (and not just because I’m a member!)

In the next couple of days I’m hoping to have a go working in two mediums I’ve never tried before, ink and acrylic. It is perhaps a lie to say I’ve never worked in ink before as I have always inked my Ratz cartoons (like the one below) using technical pens before scanning into the computer to add colour. What I’m going to do this time is use brush and ink (which I’ve been informed is not the easiest way to use ink) and then experiment with the different effects that can be created using different mediums to colour the resulting image. I may add my experimentation in acrylic into this mix too and re-work the same picture over and over in different styles to see what happens. I’m hoping that I enjoy using acrylics as I love the effects that you can get with oil and acrylic but after a short experiment using oils I decided that I just didn’t enjoy using them not least because the smell made me feel ill and made poor old Peanut the rat sneeze!

RIP Moniack

 I’ve not had the best time of it rat wise recently and now I’ve lost Moniack too. It’s been quite a shock as although he’d been ill for about a week and had suffered with bumble foot for at least the past 6 months I have always thought of him as a baby and so I always expected him to get better. I was quite surprised when I looked at his birth date and realised that far from being a baby he was in fact two and a half, a very old gentleman by any ratty standard.

Moniack was one of two rattys that I had from breeder friends of mine, a fact that made them very special. I had met their parents and watched them grow from little pink sausages into hefty soppy rattys. Sadly I lost Moniacks brother at the age of one which was heartbreaking and after that Moniack refused to live with any other ratty. As he grew up Moniack became known as my fat sewer ratty because of his often dishevelled fur that was perfect sewer rat colour and he had the distinction of being the only rat to have ever sent me to A&E *bless the little booger* He was also well known for his obsessive love of biscuits, his very unratty love of chewing cage bars and his reputation for being a coconut short of a shy!

Good night my silly boy, go find your brother who I know you’ve missed.

With Moniack gone Peanut is now an only ratty. Being another boy who refuses to live with others it looks like mine will be a one rat household for a while.

RIP Sausage

About 3 years ago I bought my apartment and decided to start keeping rats again. Well I say decided, a more accurate account would be to say that I went to a pet shop and a ratty decided that he was coming home with me, I had very little to do with the decision!

In the end four rattys came to live with me Reggie, Rolo, Gizmo & Sausage. Over the past year or so I’ve had to say goodbye to the others but Sausage was the Peter Pan of the rat world. Despite being 2years10months well over the normal lifespan of a rat he remained to be the impish little ratty he’s always been right up to the end.

I’ve had many scares with Sausage over the past year, not because he has been ill but because he was such a heavy sleeper. Several times I went to his cage for treat time and found him so fast asleep that when I touched him he didn’t move. I would then attempt to pick him up and he would jump awake and give me the most indignant look I have ever seen on a rat!

It would be very difficult to describe my little imp but a picture speak a thousand words.

It really is the end of an era, with the last of my original boys gone to the bridge.

We Haz Nana

Posts have been a little thin on the ground this week. This is entirely due to laziness (although I’m sure I could think of an excuse if I tried!) It was my birthday last week and I’ve been spending this week playing with my birthday presents… I’m such a child!

So to fill the gap I thought I’d share these photos of my rattys enjoying treat time this evening.

Above Left - Sausage my oldest boy protecting his treat. Above Right - Peanut the baby trying to hide from the camera

Above Left - Dizzy my little blind boy... he has no idea he's having a photo *bless*. Above Right - Moniack, determined not to stop eating for something as unimportant as a photo.

And Finally - Slinky, he found the camera far more interesting than his treat.

Yawn… So tired

No daily sketch today for as the title suggests I am very tired. So instead here’s a ratty.

On Air

Monday, 21 June 2010
On Air



Steff the musicale ratty is the latest in my Ratz collection created from Ratville. She was drawn by hand using black ink and then coloured using Photoshop. Steff will be making an appearance in the Amatheya.co.uk shop soon.

At The Movies

Friday, 5 February 2010
At The Movies



This is another Ratty inspired by the lovely people at Ratville. This design will be appearing on on Zazzle shortly.