Rainy night in Georgia

We're getting some much-needed rain tonight in Georgia. The turtles will be appreciating that. Classes start tomorrow. I've been thinking about things that inspire me. One was the Photo Diary of a Terrapin Researcher, but that seems sadly, unaccessible now. I read some good books over break. One I particularly enjoyed was Vincent Dethier's Crickets & Katydids: Concerts and Solos--wonderful natural history writing about insects, acoustic biology and his early science career , back in the 1930's.

On rainy nights in very early spring, or late winter, Spotted salamanders embark on their breeding migrations. When I lived in New York, that time would be a couple of months away. The range of this species includes Georgia, and I'll have to find out when they come out down here. They are large salamanders, glossy black with bright yellow and sometimes orange spots. I did an illustration of one for a bookmark from Acorn Designs. The image here is a scratchboard drawing, the one on the bookmark is with a technique similar to the one i used with Big Mamma Snapper. Scratchboard involves India ink on a clay-coated board. The clay coating allows you to scratch out inked areas, so you can draw in black and in white at the same time, and also make changes without starting over completely.