in english:
Hummingbird, the Rose Sucker.
She is hungry.
She is thirsty.

inspired by my friend esther, who, like a hummingbird, must eat and drink constantly or become woozy and fierce. it turns out these two qualities are not mutually exclusive!

the sketch:

it seems like people are talking about chickens, chickens, chickens lately. urban chickens. building a coop, gathering eggs for the best omelets. it made me think of a weird photograph i took last time i was in malaysia. i rooted it out from my photograph boxes and made a little painting of it.

when i went to visit nenek’s house one afternoon about ten years ago, my uncle udin was there, tending to his pygmy chickens. i asked if i could take a picture of him with the chickens, and he agreed. i assumed we would be taking the picture outside by the chicken coop, but he brought a pair of the tiny little chickens inside and sat on one of nenek’s chairs for a real portrait.

2nd edition bowerbird, for sale HERE.

but maybe not so bad, considering where i started!

clearly, i’ll be needing more practice. the screenprinting class i took was at this place near my apartment called workshop. if you live in san francisco, let them teach you something! they’re really nice, and despite my screenprinting inadequacies, the class itself was delightful.

*goccopocalypse: noun. what happened when the only company that makes print gocco supplies stopped making them.

to remind me of the little mountain bluebird that wouldn’t sit still for a picture last year in truckee.

i also made one with purple lettering <--click

alexa told a story about growing up in north carolina. she would bring her cool 90s grungy friends home, and her uncle doug would spoil it all by saying, “let’s go out for ice cream — hallelujah!” (everything ended in hallelujah, he was a preacher.)

here is the wolf & crow bassist:

black shapes, so pleasant and inky!

when she packed up her case to go home, it reminded me of this:

a little girl in white ankle socks bent over double under a yellow flowered cello case, struggling down divisadero like sisyphus.

alexa caught me droring:

anteaters gallumphing on the pampas. i think they are actually fairly solitary, but i couldn’t resist.

here is david attenborough running one down at about 4:26 in this life on air segment. of course, you can’t have fun like this anymore!

and the pangolin, a walking artichoke! i always pictured them scrambling around like armadilloes, but they trundle along on their hind legs, i had no idea.

really!

a tiny little painting about malaysia. it includes stuff i thought about as a kid: 1. the copious amounts of milo ( a chocolate-tasting drink sort of like ovaltine) my aunties made me, 2. the plants which snapped shut that i played with all day, 3. why do malaysian cats have no tails?, 4. ketupat, little woven packages of steamed rice my nenek used to make, 5. mom’s curry puffs (delish!), 6. mangosteens, my favorite fruit, and the rambutans from nenek’s tree, 7. cicak, the little house geckos that scrobbled along the ceilings and ate bugs. everything else i thought about later, like the carnivorous plants, giant moths, fishhead curry, and whole families weaving in traffic on their motorbikes.

the layout is based on this carson ellis poster i just love to bits kind of inexplicably. carson ellis is amazing, by the way.