I am switching platforms and in the process of gathering up things I like on here and putting them on my new website https://sketchsocialpages.art/ all old features and a few new ones soon. I am still on twitter at the same address and won't be closing this site down just in case there's anything folk want to refer back to. Its meant I'm a little behind on my challenge of an new artwork for each day of this year but not by much. Thank you for popping by, hope you do the same on the new website which I hope you'll enjoy even more.

A camel is an even-toed ungulate in the genus Camelus that bears distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. They are able to withstand changes in body temperature and water consumption that would kill most other mammals. Unlike other mammals, camels' red blood cells are oval rather than circular in shape. This facilitates the flow of red blood cells during dehydration. Camels do not directly store water in their humps; they are reservoirs of fatty tissue. When this tissue is metabolized, it yields more than one gram of water for every gram of fat processed. This fat metabolization, while releasing energy, causes water to evaporate from the lungs during respiration.

Camels have long been domesticated and, as livestock, they provide food (milk and meat) and textiles (fiber and felt from hair). Camels are working animals especially suited to their desert habitat and are a vital means of transport for passengers and cargo. There are three surviving species of camel. The one-humped dromedary makes up 94% of the world's camel population, and the two-humped Bactrian camel makes up 6%. The Wild Bactrian camel is a separate species and is now critically endangered.

​The word camel is also used informally in a wider sense, where the more correct term is "camelid", to include all seven species of the family Camelidae: true camels (the above three species), along with the "New World" camelids: the llama, the alpaca, the guanaco, and the vicuña. Camelids are the only ungulates to mate in a sitting position. Like horses, camels originated in North America and eventually spread across Beringia to Asia. They survived in the Old World, and eventually humans domesticated them and spread them globally. Along with many other megafauna in North America, the original wild camels were wiped out during the spread of the first indigenous peoples of the Americas from Asia into North America, 10 to 12,000 years ago; although fossils have never been associated with definitive evidence of hunting. Most camels surviving today are domesticated. Although feral populations exist in Australia, India and Kazakhstan, wild camels survive only in the wild Bactrian camel population of the Gobi Desert.

By at least 1200 BC the first camel saddles had appeared, and Bactrian camels could be ridden. The first saddle was positioned to the back of the camel, and control of the Bactrian camel was exercised by means of a stick. However, between 500 and 100 BC, Bactrian camels came into military use. New saddles, which were inflexible and bent, were put over the humps and divided the rider's weight over the animal. In the seventh century BC the military Arabian saddle evolved, which again improved the saddle design slightly. ​The camels were used mostly in combat because of their ability to scare off horses at close range (horses are afraid of the camels' scent), a quality famously employed by the Achaemenid Persians when fighting Lydia in the Battle of Thymbra (547 BC).

​Desert tribes and Mongolian nomads use camel hair for tents, yurts, clothing, bedding and accessories. Camels have outer guard hairs and soft inner down, and the fibres are sorted by colour and age of the animal. The guard hairs can be felted for use as waterproof coats for the herdsmen, while the softer hair is used for premium goods. The fibre can be spun for use in weaving or made into yarns for hand knitting or crochet. Pure camel hair is recorded as being used for western garments from the 17th century onwards, and from the 19th century a mixture of wool and camel hair was used.

​Camel milk is a staple food of desert nomad tribes and is sometimes considered a meal itself; a nomad can live on only camel milk for almost a month. Camel milk can readily be made into yogurt, but can only be made into butter if it is soured first, churned, and a clarifying agent is then added.

Until recently, camel milk could not be made into camel cheese because rennet was unable to coagulate the milk proteins to allow the collection of curds. Now by the addition of calcium phosphate and vegetable rennet in the cheese produced from this process has low levels of cholesterol and is easy to digest, even for the lactose intolerant. Camel milk can also be made into ice cream.
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A camel carcass can provide a substantial amount of meat. The brisket, ribs and loin are among the preferred parts, and the hump is considered a delicacy. The hump contains "white and sickly fat", which can be used to make the khli (preserved meat) of mutton, beef, or camel. On the other hand, camel milk and meat are rich in protein, vitamins, glycogen, and other nutrients making them essential in the diet of many people.

​Source: Wikipedia

For starters, portraits can show the full figure of the person, or just the head, or any combination in between. A portrait can even focus on a specific part or region of the person's body, cropping out the rest.The pose is also important. The person can be facing straight ahead, depicted in 1/4 turn, captured in profile, or be turned 3/4. There have even been portraits showing just the back of a person. A strong portrait captivates viewers, draws them into the painting, and engages their attention. Such a portrait painting causes the viewer to wonder about the person depicted. In this way a portrait painting or drawing can function as a biography - telling the story of that person's life.

Examine things like:

Facial expression - Does the sitter look happy, sad, contemplative, sarcastic? Lively or tired? Peaceful or angry? Friendly or menacing? Gesture or pose - What is the sitter doing? Are they sitting still, or standing? Are they riding a horse? Are they gazing out to sea? Holding a basket of flowers? Are they pointing at something? Clothing - How is the person dressed? Are they nude? If they are clothed, do they wear fancy clothes? Military regalia? A black evening gown? Or are they more modestly dressed? Are they wearing tattered clothes? Are the fashions contemporary or old? Setting - Where does the portrait take place? Is it indoors or outdoors? What do the surroundings look like? Shabby or elegant? Modern or dated? Is it in someone's kitchen? Or on top of a mountain? Objects - What other objects are in the painting, besides the sitter? If they are sitting down, what kind of chair is it - a fancy ornate chair, soft velvet sofa, or a plain wooden chair? Are they holding anything? Are there objects in the painting that grab your attention?

Strange or surprising colour schemes can be used to great effect in portrait painting. It's an excellent way to convey emotion. Delicate, detailed portraits often carry a certain sensitivity and thoughtfulness. An artist using rough, choppy brush strokes approaches portrait painting from a different, more expressive angle.

An artist might choose to depict a person exactly as they are - flaws included, so that every wart, pimple or scar is clearly memorialized in paint for all to see. Artists may sometimes even exaggerate a person's characteristics, good or bad, to make a caricature of the person. Conversely, an artist might "kindly overlook" the person's flaws, correcting imperfections and presenting an idealised view of a person. The portrait can seek to replicate reality by making the figure look sculptural, as if it really existed in 3-dimensional space. Or the artist may play with the 2-dimensionality of the flat surface, and render a portrait that doesn't seek to emerge from the picture plane.

Source: Art-is-fun.com

The truth is there is no fixed style or technique to do a portrait, no set media to do it in and just like any other subject, there are no fixed rules but for the novice portraiture can seem daunting because there is an assumption that you have to do a likeness or make it realistic. If you now think of some of all the art movements there have ever been or even just Picasso's portraits you quickly understand why this is nonsense. Photo realism, though talented is not exactly the most imaginative way to tackle portrait, I tend to prefer an unusual technique and nearly always a characterful face ir quirky perspective.

​Even the proportions of a face are not fixed as some folk have larger features than others and if you distort or foreshorten the perspective you'll soon find that carefully observation always works best although I will admit having a rough guide as to how the features relate to each other is helpful. Luckily there are plenty of 'How to draw faces' guides, online courses and videos to view for free but would add that I found the most helpful thing to remember is the shape of the skull and roughly how big the head in relation to the body. It is undoubtedly useful to bear the proportions of the entire head and its features in mind so here is my rough guide as to how things fit.

​Human faces are rarely symmetrical and are never circular, they are oval and some are long and thin, some are angular and some are rounder and plumper than others. The eye sockets are usually positioned have way down the face, then the bottom of the nose is half way between the eyes and chin and the mouth is roughly half way between the bottom of the nose and the chin. The ears are approximately from the top of the eye to the bottom of the mouth, but they vary enormously in size and shape just like eyes, noses, mouths and teeth. If a person has their eyes or mouth open or screwed up tight it alters things quite a bit but that's as much as you need to know for drawing faces from the side, or front when not foreshortened. For foreshortened faces, whatever is closest will seem much bigger than normal which is worth remembering for views from above or below. Finally just remember the back of the skull is round and doesn't go straight up from the neck, it's housing for the brain so sticks out a bit.

​There are many exercises to help you draw more accurately including using your thumb to measure distances along a pencil when drawing, but you must measure at arms length consistently. Others prefer to use geometric shapes, particularly triangles to help to get some detail, but the one exercise I found suited me best was to drawn without letting the pencil leave the page correcting distances by going back and forth over the page gradually darkening the marks where I was happy. That's about all I know about portraiture except to say... make it personal.

Falconry is one of the oldest hobbies known to exist. The practice is believed to have its origins either in Mesopotamia, in the middle east, or in western Mongolia, in Asia about two thousand years before Rome became an empire.. Though thought to have its origins as a practical form of hunting to provide food, falconry later developed into a noble pursuit.

Falconry spread across the world with depictions in art and writing from India, China, Japan, the Roman empire, and the Middle East. Birds of prey became important symbols in many cultures: the owl was the sacred animal of Athena in ancient Greece and the aquila (eagle) was the symbol of the Roman Imperial army. It is generally accepted that falconry arrived in Britain around the 9th Century AD. The Book of St Albans published in 1486, details the pursuits of gentlemen of the aristocracy and goes into great detail about hunting, fishing, heraldry and falconry.

The book includes a section that describes which birds of prey are appropriate for which class in society:

• An emperor should use an Eagle, being the most regal of all birds of prey.
• A king would use a Gyr Falcon, the largest of all falcons
• A prince should have a ‘gentle falcon’
• A baron should use a Bustard (Bustards are actually a game bird hunted by falconers, so this is probably a mistranslation)
• Knights get a Saker Falcon
• A lady would be expected to use a Merlin, a small type of falcon
• Young men would use a Hobby, mostly because it was considered quite a cheap animal and so an ideal beginner’s raptor
• Men of the church would be expected to use a Sparrowhawk, considered a mundane animal appropriate for the clergy who were expected to shun extravagance.

​Source: kriii.com/a-brief-history-of-falconry

Hawks can be divided into three groups—longwings, shortwings, and broadwings. The hawks in each of these three categories display different traits because of adaptation to their hunting environments and prey. Longwings are falcons, such as the peregrine, the saker, and the gyrfalcon. They mainly hunt other birds in flight. Because their pursuit of quarry can take them over considerable distances, longwings are flown over open terrain, such as desert or moorland, so the falconer can keep the falcon in sight. Shortwings and broadwings take predominantly ground game, such as rabbit and hare, or bird species close to the ground, such as a pheasant breaking cover. Physically structured to work in enclosed, wooded countryside, shortwings—which are the true hawks such as goshawks or sparrowhawks—usually hunt from trees, or directly from the gloved fist of the falconer. Finally, the broadwinged group includes eagles and buzzards. The broad wing-bases enable them to soar and they are best suited to hunting in rolling countryside and mountainous terrain, although buzzards can also hunt in wooded areas.

​Longwings take prey either “out of hood,” whereby the hood is removed and the falcon flies in direct pursuit from the falconer’s gloved fist straight at quarry, or they are flown in a “waiting on” style, in which the falcon climbs high above the falconer, waiting to “stoop” at game flushed beneath it. Shortwings are natural sprinters and fly from the fist or from a tree in an accelerated burst of speed to close in rapidly on their quarry. Broadwings also fly directly from the fist (or tree) at game, but some, especially eagles, may be trained to soar while the falconer walks beneath them searching for quarry.
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​Source: Britannica.com

Typically each adult sheep is shorn once each year (a sheep may be said to have been "shorn" or "sheared", depending upon dialect). The annual shearing most often occurs in a shearing shed, a facility especially designed to process often hundreds and sometimes more than 3,000 sheep per day.

​Sheep are shorn in all seasons, depending on the climate, management requirements and the availability of a woolclasser and shearers. Ewes are normally shorn prior to lambing in the warmer months, but consideration is typically made as to the welfare of the lambs by not shearing during cold climate winters. However, in high country regions, pre lamb shearing encourages ewes to seek shelter among the hillsides so that newborn lambs aren't completely exposed to the elements. Shorn sheep tolerate frosts well, but young sheep especially will suffer in cold, wet windy weather (even in cold climate summers). In this event they are shedded for several nights until the weather clears. Some sheep may also be shorn with stud combs commonly known as cover combs which leave more wool on the animal in colder months, giving greater protection.

Europe's oldest city, Knossos, derived its wealth from the sheep wool industry. The largest group of Linear B tablets is the great archive principally of shearing records though also of sheep breeding. The medieval English wool trade was one of the most important factors in the English economy. The main sheep-shearing was an annual midsummer (June) event in medieval England culminating in the sheep-shearing feast. It had always been conventional practice to wash sheep. In Australia, until the 1870s, squatters washed their sheep in nearby creeks prior to shearing. Later some expensive hot water installations were constructed on some of the larger stations for the washing. Australian growers were influenced by the Spanish practice of washing their very fine wool after shearing.

There were three main reasons for the custom in Australia:
The English manufacturers demanded that Australian wool growers provide their fleeces free from excessive vegetable matter, burrs, soil, etc. so they could be processed in the same way as any other raw wool. The dirty fleeces were hard to shear and demanded that the metal blade shears be sharpened more often. Wool in Australia was carted by bullock team or horse teams and charged by weight. Washed wool was lighter and did not cost as much to transport.

Since sheep make wool come what may, if wool demand drops, prices can suffer quickly if fleeces go unsold and it can result in a farm failing as has happened in the UK in recent times. Wool now goes into products as diverse as the mechanical gears for wind turbines, bicycle seats and the lining for ties so I hope we continue to use this versatile natural product for many decades to come.

Oxen are used for plowing, for transport (pulling carts, hauling wagons and even riding), for threshing grain by trampling, and for powering machines that grind grain or supply irrigation among other purposes. Oxen may be also used to skid logs in forests, particularly in low-impact, select-cut logging.

Oxen are usually yoked in pairs. Light work such as carting household items on good roads might require just one pair, while for heavier work, further pairs would be added as necessary. A team used for a heavy load over difficult ground might exceed nine or ten pairs.

​A tradition in southeastern England was to use oxen (often Sussex cattle) as dual-purpose animals: for draft and beef. A plowing team of eight oxen normally consisted of four pairs aged a year apart. Each year, a pair of steers of about three years of age would be bought for the team and trained with the older animals. The pair would be kept for about four years, then sold at about seven years old to be fattened for beef – thus covering much of the cost of buying that year's new pair. Use of oxen for plowing survived in some areas of England (such as the South Downs) until the early twentieth century.

Oxen can pull heavier loads, and pull for a longer period of time than horses depending on weather conditions.[17] On the other hand, they are also slower than horses, which has both advantages and disadvantages; their pulling style is steadier, but they cannot cover as much ground in a given period of time. For agricultural purposes, oxen are more suitable for heavy tasks such as breaking sod or plowing in wet, heavy, or clay-filled soil. When hauling freight, oxen can move very heavy loads in a slow and steady fashion. They are at a disadvantage compared to horses when it is necessary to pull a plow or load of freight relatively quickly.

​For millennia, oxen also could pull heavier loads because of the use of the yoke, which was designed to work best with the neck and shoulder anatomy of cattle. Until the invention of the horse collar, which allowed the horse to engage the pushing power of its hindquarters in moving a load, horses could not pull with their full strength because the yoke was incompatible with their anatomy.

Patrick Heron CBE (30 January 1920 – 20 March 1999) was a British abstract and figurative artist, critic, writer, and polemicist, who lived in Zennor, Cornwall. He was recognised as one of the leading painters of his generation. Influenced by Cézanne, Matisse, Braque and Bonnard, ​He first saw the paintings of Cézanne at an exhibition at the National Gallery in 1933, an influence which continued throughout his career. Heron made a significant contribution to the dissemination of modernist ideas of painting through his critical writing and primarily his art.

Heron's artworks are most noted for his exploration and use of colour and light. He is known for both his early figurative work and non-figurative works, which over the years looked to explore further the idea of making all areas of the painting of equal importance. Born 30 January 1920 at Headingley, Leeds in Yorkshire, Patrick Heron was the eldest child of Thomas Milner Heron and Eulalie Mabel. When Patrick Heron was five and his brother Michael was 4 the family moved to Cornwall, where Tom joined Alec Walker at Cryséde to manage and expand the business from artist-designed woodblock prints on silk to include garment-making and retail. The whole family, now four children, moved again in 1929 to Welwyn Garden City where Tom established Cresta Silks. Notable designers included Edward McKnight Kauffer and Wells Coates, Paul Nash and Cedric Morris worked with Cresta, and Patrick also created fabric designs for the firm from his teenage years. At school, Patrick Heron met his future wife, Delia, daughter of Celia and Richard Reiss, a director of the company in Welwyn Garden City.

Registered as a conscientious objector in World War II, Heron worked as an agricultural labourer in Cambridgeshire before he was signed off for ill health.He returned to Cornwall to work for Bernard Leach at the Leach Pottery, St Ives, in 1944–45. During this time, he met many leading artists of the St Ives School, including Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson.[19] Reacquainted with Cornwall, Heron spent each summer there until it became his permanent home in 1956 after his purchase and refurbishment of Eagle's Nest the year before from Mark Arnold-Forster, a house Heron had lived in during his childhood. This coincided with his commitment to non-figurative painting and resulted in a very productive period of his work. He spent the rest of his life here, until he died at home in March 1999.

​His 'Stripe' paintings, described by Alan Bowness as being 'suffused with light and colour and full of a positive life-enhancing quality so free and so refreshing' emphasised this move towards the principles of colour.Writing in 1968, Bowness went on to describe how he could 'think of few more disconcerting paintings in the last twenty years than Heron's stripe paintings of 1957'. When Ben Nicholson moved to Switzerland in 1958, Heron took over his studio at Porthmeor Studios, overlooking the beach at Porthmeor, St Ives,[3] and began to take advantage of the larger space to paint at a bigger scale – first soft-edged and then the self-described "wobbly hard-edge painting".

​The shock of Delia's unexpected death in 1979 meant Heron did little painting for some time. He found a way to reinvigorate his creative approach: rather than rapidly drawing large shapes in pen across the canvas which would then be filled in with a fine Japanese watercolour brush as he had through most of the 1970s, Heron used a large brush, mixed different colours together, and painted from the arm rather than the wrist, allowing the works to develop through the act of painting. In 1989 Heron was invited to be artist-in-residence at the museum of New South Wales in Sydney, and this resulted in another highly prolific period of his work.[50] Drawing inspiration from his daily walk to his studio through the city's Botanic Gardens located by the harbour, Heron produced six large paintings and 46 gouaches in sixteen weeks. These works are reactions to real visual experiences, yet are not direct representations; instead the line and colour encapsulate "specific visual realities without ever depicting them".

​These intense periods of activity characterised Heron's later career, made obvious through his exhibitions at the Barbican, and another at Camden Arts Centre in 1994. Taking advantage of the space of the centre, Heron created a series of paintings of grand proportions – at 6 feet 6 inches (2.0 m) and ranging from 11 to 17 feet (3.35 to 5.18 m) long, they were conceived with Camden Arts Centre's galleries in mind. Tate Gallery, London staged a major retrospective of his work in 1998. This was the most comprehensive exhibition of Heron's work and brought together items from the different decades and periods of his working life. Nicholas Serota, former director of the Tate Gallery, who was a friend as well as patron, described Heron as "one of the most influential figures in post-war British art".

Horses are thought to have been domesticated as long ago as 4000 BCE and have been used for hunting, transport, warfare and agriculture throughout human history. Horses are extremely social animals, naturally living in large herds with a dominance hierarchy, and can often form strong bonds with humans, or other animals, as well as their herd mates.

Most communication between individuals in the herd is through body language, this expressiveness may be part of what makes the horse so attractive. Their responsiveness to body language and sensitivity to dominance, along with their curiosity, is what makes them easy to train. Horses are evolved to flee and have a strong flight response, in breeds used for working, this response has been dulled by selective breeding to produce more docile animals.

​Although working horses are traditionally very large, heavily built, breeds such as the Shire, horses and ponies of all sizes have been used over the centuries. Working horses tend to be stockily built, with confirmation adapted for pulling and carrying loads, with short, broad backs and powerful hind quarters. They also need to be calm, docile and easy to work with.

Horses have a much lower impact on the land than heavy machinery, causing less, and shorter term, damage to soil structure and flora and fauna. They can therefore be used in sensitive sites such as ancient woodlands, ancient meadows and archaeological sites. This lower impact also means horses can be used on boggy ground or early in the year when the land is too wet for heavy machinery. Additionally, the manoeuvreability of horses means they can be used on steeper and less open sites than tractors.

Horses are not fuelled by fossil fuels but by grass and other plants, much of which you may be able to grow yourself or obtain locally from sustainable sources. As a bonus they will provide you with excellent fertiliser, and could even be used to produce milk and meat. Breeding and training horses can also provide an additional income stream. Working with horses will keep you fitter than working with a tractor and if, like many people, you love being with horses your passion can become part of your sustainable lifestyle. Many people are fascinated by working horses, providing opportunities for demonstrations and training.

​A hectare of grain can provide bioethanol to cultivate 10 hectares using a tractor. The same hectare can feed 2 horses that can also cultivate 10 hectares, but without the pollution or the embodied energy of machinery or factories, and they’ll provide manure to produce more grain (The Land, issue 2). Farmers prefer tractors because of speed – time is at a premium because of the need to earn money due to rising land prices and the power of large supermarkets to squeeze their incomes. Systemic economic and planning change is required if farmers (and the rest of us) can live and work at a slower pace, more in harmony with nature, without being bankrupted.

​Source: LowImpact.com

A pig is any of the animals in the genus Sus, within the even-toed ungulate family Suidae. Pigs include domestic pigs and their ancestor, the common Eurasian wild boar (Sus scrofa), along with other species. Pigs, like all suids, are native to the Eurasian and African continents, ranging from Europe to the Pacific islands. Suids other than the pig are the babirusa of Indonesia, the pygmy hog of South Asia, the warthog of Africa, and other pig genera from Africa.

​A typical pig has a large head with a long snout that is strengthened by a special prenasal bone and by a disk of cartilage at the tip. The snout is used to dig into the soil to find food and is a very acute sense organ. There are four hoofed toes on each foot, with the two larger central toes bearing most of the weight, but the outer two also being used in soft ground. The rear teeth are adapted for crushing. In the male, the canine teeth form tusks, which grow continuously and are sharpened by constantly being ground against each other.

Occasionally, captive mother pigs may savage their own piglets, often if they become severely stressed. Some attacks on newborn piglets are non-fatal. Others may cause the death of the piglets and sometimes, the mother may eat the piglets. It is estimated that 50% of piglet fatalities are due to the mother attacking, or unintentionally crushing, the newborn pre-weaned animals.

​With around 1 billion individuals alive at any time, the domestic pig is one of the most numerous large mammals on the planet. The ancestor of the domestic pig is the wild boar, which is one of the most numerous and widespread large mammals. Its many subspecies are native to all but the harshest climates of continental Eurasia and its islands and Africa as well, from Ireland and India to Japan and north to Siberia.

Long isolated from other pigs on the many islands of Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, pigs have evolved into many different species, including wild boar, bearded pigs, and warty pigs. Humans have introduced pigs into Australia, North and South America, and numerous islands, either accidentally as escaped domestic pigs which have gone feral, or as wild boar. Pigs are omnivores, which means that they consume both plants and animals. In the wild, they are foraging animals, primarily eating leaves, roots, fruits, and flowers, in addition to some insects and fish. As livestock, pigs are fed mostly corn and soybean meal with a mixture of vitamins and minerals added to the diet. Traditionally, they were raised on dairy farms and called "mortgage lifters", due to their ability to use the excess milk as well as whey from cheese and butter making combined with pasture. Older pigs will consume three to five gallons of water per day.

​The relatively short, stiff, coarse hairs of the pig are called bristles, and were once so commonly used in paintbrushes. In May 1946, in response to a shortage of pig bristles for paintbrushes to paint houses in the post-World War II construction boom, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) flew in 28 short tons of pig bristles from China, their only commercially available source at the time. Human skin is very similar to pig skin, therefore pig skin has been used in many preclinical studies. In addition to providing use in biomedical research and for drug testing, genetic advances in human healthcare have provided a pathway for domestic pigs to become xenotransplantation candidates for humans.

Source: Wikipedia
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The goat is a member of the animal family Bovidae and the subfamily Caprinae, meaning it is closely related to the sheep. There are over 300 distinct breeds of goat. It is one of the oldest domesticated species of animal, according to archaeological evidence that its earliest domestication occurred in Iran. Neolithic farmers began to herd wild goats primarily for easy access to milk and meat, as well as to their dung, which was used as fuel; and their bones, hair, and sinew were used for clothing, building, and tools.

Female goats are referred to as does or nannies, intact males are called bucks or billies, and juvenile goats of both sexes are called kids. Castrated males are called wethers. While the words hircine and caprine both refer to anything having a goat-like quality, hircine is used most often to emphasize the distinct smell of domestic goats.

Goats are naturally curious. They are also agile and well known for their ability to climb and balance in precarious places. This makes them the only ruminant to regularly climb trees. Due to their agility and inquisitiveness, they are notorious for escaping their pens by testing fences and enclosures, either intentionally or simply because they are used to climbing. If any of the fencing can be overcome, goats will almost inevitably escape. Goats have been found to be as intelligent as dogs by some studies.

​When handled as a group, goats tend to display less herding behavior than sheep. When grazing undisturbed, they tend to spread across the field or range, rather than feed side by side as do sheep. When nursing young, goats will leave their kids separated ("lying out") rather than clumped, as do sheep. They will generally turn and face an intruder and bucks are more likely to charge or butt at humans than are rams.

Glassblowing is a glass forming technique which was invented by the Syrian craftsman in the 1st century BC somewhere along the Syro-Palestinian coast. The establishment of the Roman Empire provided motivation and dominance of glass production by this method, the use of blown glass for everyday tasks spread. The Phoenicians set up the first glass workshops on the eastern borders of the Empire, in the birthplace of glassblowing in contemporary Lebanon, Israel and Palestine, as well as in the province of Cyprus. Meanwhile, the glassblowing technique also reached Egypt.

​By the middle Ages, Venice had become a major center of glass making. Then, the glass blowing industry moved to the island of Murano. The Venetian glassmakers from Murano produced cristallo, clear, fine glassware by employing glassblowing, in particular, the mould-blowing technique.

Eventually, this art spread in many parts of the world, in China, Japan and the Islamic lands and became ubiquitous. In the 1820s the industry experienced the most important innovation since the Syrians invented the blow pipe. Bakewell patented a process of mechanically pressing hot glass which would change how glass was used forever.

After 1890, glass uses and manufacturing developments increased very rapidly. In 1903, Michael Owens engineered the first automatic bottle blowing machine that could produce millions of light bulbs a day and in the late 1950's Sir Alastair Pilkington invented float glass production method by which 90% of flat glass is still manufactured today.

Glassblowing involves inflating molten glass into a bubble, or parison, with the aid of a blowpipe, or blow tube. Glassblower, glassmith or gaffer is a person who blows glass. Glassblowing involves three furnaces. The major tools involved are the blowpipe (or blow tube), the punty (or pontil), bench, marver, blocks, jacks, paddles, tweezers, paper and a variety of shears.

Before the invention of the metal blowpipes, the ancient glassworkers made clay blowpipes, also known as mouth blowers, due to the accessibility and availability of the resources. Two major methods of glassblowing are free-blowing and mold-blowing. Free-blowing technique held very important position in glass forming ever since its introduction in the middle of the 1st century BC until the late 19th century and is still widely use nowadays.
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​Mold-blowing was an alternate glassblowing technique that came after the invention of the free-blowing. This tools and techniques have changed very little over the centuries. The glassblowing craft was passed from father to son or from master to apprentice. From its beginning, the formulas and procedures used in glass-making were kept as a secret and death was the penalty for disclosing secret technique.

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Although soap itself goes back to ancient times, Europeans manufactured high quality varieties by the 16th century. The earliest paintings of children playing with bubbles appeared in the 17th century and, in the 19th century, London’s A. & F. Pears created a famous advertising campaign for its soaps using a painting by John Everett Millais of a child playing with bubbles. Seventeenth century Flemish painters show children blowing bubbles with clay pipes. Generations of 18th and 19th century mothers gave their children their leftover washing soap to blow bubbles. At the beginning of the 20th century, street peddlers and pitchmen were among the first to sell bubbles as a toy.

​Soap bubbles seem simple, but they illustrate the mathematical problem of minimal surface, assuming the shape with the least possible surface area to contain a given volume. A bubble is a closed soap film; due to the difference in outside and inside pressure, a bubble’s surface has a constant mean curvature. Bubbles demonstrate concepts such as flexibility, colour formation, reflective or mirrored surfaces, concave and convex surfaces, transparency, various shapes, elastic properties, and comparative sizing.

During the early 1940's, a chemical company, Chemtoy, which sold cleaning supplies, revolutionized the toy world by systematically bottling bubble solution. Tootsietoy Company later acquired the small chemical company and put bubble solution into full retail distribution by the late 1940s.

During the 1960s, bubbles became a symbol of peace and harmony to hippies and flower children and further popularized the sport of bubble blowing. In the 1970's, 80's and 90's, bubble making companies like Imperial, Wells and Pustifix came into being increasing world-wide sales of bottles of bubble solution to more than 200 million a year.

​Today bubble machines rapidly blow multiple bubbles, bubble guns shoot harmless bubbles at soapy opponents, and bubble rockets leave iridescent bubble trails in their wakes. Bubbles also come in miniature party favor bottles, used for children’s birthdays and adult weddings alike. Tourists can find bubbles in souvenir-shaped bottles at attractions worldwide.

It is difficult to think of a plaything more ubiquitous than bubbles. They float with a magical iridescent gleam, and then they disappear in an instant.

One main difference between pen & ink and pencil drawing is shading. With a pencil, you can produce different shades depending on how much pressure you place on the pencil. Pens on the other hand don’t work that way. In order to get nice shading, you have to rely on texture.

​Hatching is simply straight parallel lines. No need to use a ruler though. The lines don’t have to be perfectly straight or the same distance apart. You can take the parallel lines in your hatching technique and curve them with the shape of the object creating contour lines. This will give a 3D effect to the object and really make it stand out. A decorative effect can be achieved with angled lines going in one direction and then another set of short angled lines going in the opposite direction (not overlapping).

​Stippling is basically a series of small dots, clustered where the shading should be. The further away the dots, the lighter the area. The closer they are together, the darker the shading .S shading with random squiggly lines. You can also overlap squiggly lines where the shading is darker and thin them out where it’s lighter. You are not limited to just one method of shading with a pen. Combining pen work with ink washes is perhaps the easiest way to create an ink drawing image with some depth.

You can of course paint with ink and by watering it down create lighter tones but it's best to water it down before applying it to the page. India ink is a standard staple for ink artists – it’s permanent and waterproof. Waterproof inks are best for line work while water-soluble ink should be used for washes. Wet ink must be handled with even more care once it has been applied to the paper. Always remember to watch your arm – you don’t want to swipe your sleeve across the wet ink. If you’re in a hurry to dry your ink, use a hairdryer.

​Ink reacts differently if it is applied wet-in-wet rather than wet-on-dry. Working on a wet surface will give you much less control over how the ink behaves, If you want to try working in this way, opt for a ‘sized’ paper – paper with a resistant gelatine layer. Any paper that’s too absorbent will cause the ink to bleed. One of the most popular ink techniques is the line and wash method – mixing dark lines with washes of dilute colour (either ink or watercolour). Washing colour on top of black lines can often dull them so it helps to consider this when planning a drawing. In order to create a cohesive and balanced artwork, it can be best to work up line and wash in alternate layers on top of one another.

​The familiar way of holding a paintbrush (leaning the brush into your hand at a diagonal angle to the paper) is actually the western way. In the Far East, artists usually hold the brush completely vertically, away from the palm of the hand. If you're still nervous about working with ink, you can always draw with a pencil first then go over it with ink and either rub out the pencil marks or build up your composition using both. Spontaneity and accepting mistakes often adds to an artwork so be bold and go for it!

Kites were invented in Asia, though their exact origin can only be speculated. The oldest depiction of a kite is from a mesolithic period cave painting in Muna island, southeast Sulawesi, Indonesia, which has been dated from 9500–9000 years B.C. In China, the kite has been claimed as the invention of the 5th-century BC Chinese philosophers and Lu Ban. Materials ideal for kite building were readily available including silk fabric for sail material; fine, high-tensile-strength silk for flying line; and resilient bamboo for a strong, lightweight framework. By 549 AD paper kites were certainly being flown, as it was recorded that in that year a paper kite was used as a message for a rescue mission. Ancient and medieval Chinese sources describe kites being used for measuring distances, testing the wind, lifting men, signaling, and communication for military operations. The earliest known Chinese kites were flat (not bowed) and often rectangular.

​Kites were decorated with mythological motifs and legendary figures; some were fitted with strings and whistles to make musical sounds while flying. After its introduction into India, the kite further evolved into the fighter kite, known as the patang in India, where thousands are flown every year on festivals such as Makar Sankranti. Kites were known throughout Polynesia, as far as New Zealand, with the assumption being that the knowledge diffused from China along with the people. Anthropomorphic kites made from cloth and wood were used in religious ceremonies to send prayers to the gods.
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​During the Song dynasty the Fire Crow, a kite carrying incendiary powder, a fuse, and a burning stick of incense was developed as a weapon. In Malays, Singapore, kites were used for fishing.

Kites were late to arrive in Europe, although windsock-like banners were known and used by the Romans. Stories of kites were first brought to Europe by Marco Polo towards the end of the 13th century, and kites were brought back by sailors from Japan and Malaysia in the 16th and 17th centuries. Kites were instrumental in the research of the Wright brothers, and others, as they developed the first airplane in the late 1800s. Several different designs of man-lifting kites were developed. The period from 1860 to about 1910 became the European "golden age of kiting". Kite flying is popular in many Asian countries, where it often takes the form of "kite fighting", in which participants try to snag each other's kites or cut other kites down.

​In the 20th century, many new kite designs were developed. These included Eddy's tailless diamond, the tetrahedral kite, the Rogallo wing, the sled kite, the parafoil, and power kites. Kites were used for scientific purposes, especially in meteorology, aeronautics, wireless communications and photography. The Rogallo wing was adapted for stunt kites and hang gliding and the parafoil was adapted for parachuting and paragliding. Kites had a historical role in lifting scientific instruments to measure atmospheric conditions for weather forecasting. They can be used to carry antennas for MF, LF or VLF-transmitters. This method was used for the reception station of the first transatlantic transmission by Marconi. Underwater kites are now being developed to harvest renewable power from the flow of water.

​Trick kites became popular after the early 2000s. The kites sacrificed some precision for the ability to perform 3D acrobatic moves. Quad-line kites are noticeable by the way that they can hover in space unlike any other sport kite. These kites can be extremely precise, hover in orientation, fly in any direction including sideways and reverse, even land at a specific spot on a wingtip.

​Source: Wikipedia